


Tap Down Low

by AnonymousHeavyIndustries



Category: Free!
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal, Angst, Blow Jobs, Bottom Yamazaki Sousuke, Glory Hole, Infidelity, M/M, Pining, Porn With Plot, Public Sex, Sexual Tension, Yamazaki Sousuke: Card-Carrying Member of Dadfuckers United
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 16:05:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12821088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousHeavyIndustries/pseuds/AnonymousHeavyIndustries
Summary: Daddy.As far as Sousuke's concerned, it has three meanings:1.) A man with offspring.2.) An attractive older man.3.) That thing you call your father.When Toraichi's involved, he has a hard time figuring out which ones apply.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw Toraichi's design and my first thought was, "Gonna need to porn that."
> 
> It's not explicitly mentioned in story, but Toraichi's 38 in this. Likewise not explicit is that Sousuke didn't fuck his shoulder over, so he's on track towards a professional swimming career and he did still attend Tokitsu for roughly the same period Rin was in Australia. [Enjoy.](https://youtu.be/83XbX9sa3BI)

At first, it was a rumour. To be more specific, it was the kind of rumour that was grounded close enough to reality that you could see it happening, but not so close that a skeptic could take it at face value, no matter how hard their mate swore it was legit—cause, see, he heard it from a friend who'd heard it from his friend (who was a solid guy, mind you) and therefore it must be true. There was no real reason to put any stock in this particular story over, say, _there's a freshman on the tennis team who's actually a girl_ or _if you cross Tanegawa from 2-B, he'll_ _curse you_ —aside from sounding marginally more plausible—but Sousuke couldn't help but be curious. He spent days going back and forth on whether or not he should investigate and after the fifth, _Hey Yamazaki, did you hear...?_ he knew he wouldn't be able to get any peace of mind if he didn't.

Not more than twenty minutes from campus was a park. He never thought about it. No one did. It was simply a place for kids to chuck rocks at each other and fight over who got the swings. It had a bathroom he'd visited a grand total of once at the end of a 10K—a quick piss and go, hadn't even bothered washing his hands—and it was there he stood now, second-guessing his quest. If it wasn't true, then so be it, he'd expected about as much. Life would go on. Maybe he'd bust a few dreambubbles when he got back so the rumour mill could get grinding on something new. But if it was true? Well. He tugged at his polo collar, letting his neck breathe a bit. He hadn't quite figured that out yet.

He headed on in. There were three urinals, three stalls, and a lone sink, the product of an overzealous project manager with a blank check budget and an ethically dubious affiliation with the local builder's union. He walked down the row of stalls, pushing the doors open one by one.

There it was, plain as day. A hole carved into the partition between the last two stalls. The edges had been filed smooth and the surrounding wall was strangely devoid of graffiti, as if in deference to the hole itself. He glanced at the door, nervous. It'd be just his luck, coming here alone and getting busted by a gang of his classmates. He might could play it off, but without someone to corroborate a cover story, he had his doubts.

Best case scenario, he'd go home with a new nickname:

_("Hey, Cocksucker, how much you cost?" "Hey, Cocksucker, you workin the hole tonight?" "Hey, Cocksucker, you got notes for English?")_

Worst case scenario ended with him toothless in the hospital, sucking fruit paste through a straw for the rest of his life. Or dead. He got on with his classmates well enough that he reckoned they probably wouldn't murder him, but he wasn't enough of an optimist to take it off the table altogether.

Taking a long, shaky breath, he stepped into the second last stall and closed the door. He listened a moment. Nobody outside, far as he could tell. He stood there another minute or two before he was sure he wouldn't be disturbed, then knelt and pressed his mouth to the hole and made-believe there was a cock waiting for him. He flicked up his tongue to tease the invisible head, tastebuds lighting up cool/clean, pursed his lips in a sloppy kiss, opened wide and took him deep. His fuckbuddy pumped slow, letting him get accustomed to the taste, cause he was nice like that, at least in Sousuke's mind.

Late twenties, early thirties. Nice bit of beard. Knew his way around a gym. Hung like a bull. (Call him a size queen, he liked what he liked.) Probably here cause he wasn't getting any from his girlfriend. Or he didn't have one. Or he was a closet homo. No, straight. He had a better chance of finding the meaning of life than another masc fag in these parts, so he had to be straight. No need to get his hopes up for something he couldn't have. And it didn't matter anyway. Through the hole, they became nobody. Nothing but a cock that needed sucking and mouth to be fucked.

He got up, sat on the toilet, and waited. Men trickled in and out as the hours passed, most using the urinals or the sink. Those who stopped for a longer visit left the far stall untouched. He got a text from Rin, ignored it. During the long lulls, he got up and paced around the stall and stepped out to drink from the sink, trying to not look at himself in the mirror. He got bored. Frustrated. Then an immense calm washed over him a couple hours in and the bathroom started feeling cozy. He found a nice groove in the toilet seat. Played with his dick a little. Not to turn himself on, but because it was there and he liked seeing it bundled in his briefs all safe and snug. Smelled his hand after, because why not. Rin texted him again and he fired back a _fuck off I'm busy_ without bothering to read it.

When his phone gave its last dying beep, he figured he'd waited long enough. He stood. Someone entered. He sat back down. One last shot, then he'd call it quits for the night.

In the gap between the divider and the floor he could see a pair of ruby red sharkskin shoes. The man entered the far stall and dropped his pants, but none of the expected sounds or smells followed. The electricity crackling in Sousuke's gut amplified to a painful degree. Hot saliva rose up his gullet. He swallowed hard and hunched over, pressing at his stomach with his sweaty hands to try to settle it down. It was fine. Nothing bad would happen. Everything would be okay.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

A red shoe slid to the side, toe hingeing up in slow motion. It came down in a sharp _tap!_ that echoed through the empty bathroom. Sousuke tentatively slid his own foot over and tapped back. The stranger traced the rim of the hole with his finger. Sousuke mirrored the motion and sealed the agreement.

He tugged at his trackie bottoms as he went down on his knees and stared at the cock now protruding through the wall. His experience with dicksucking started and stopped with him spraining his neck after Rin walked in on him trying to blow himself. Rin didn't know how he was, what he was into, so for him it'd been something to joke about, to say, _Shit, if you wanna suck a cock that bad, mine's free_ , not realizing that he'd wanted to do that for a few years now. Not that he craved Rin's cock in particular, they just happened to have enough history together that he liked to think that it could happen. Any solid piece of meat would be fine.

And what a piece this was. Arrow-straight, thick as a club, and even though he didn't get full access on account of the wall, the guy was no slouch in the length department either. Through the edges of the hole, he could see a dense thicket of brown pubes and a hint of ballsack. The shaft was a dark, ruddy pink, snaked through with veins fit to burst. Rocks, steel, diamond, none of them could begin to cover how hard it was. If you shot it, the bullet would bounce right off. And the smell! That lovely, musky smell of man. Not filth, as one unversed in the delights of a man's body may presume, but a dark masculine scent that caked his nostrils and got his nosehairs aprickle. He breathed it in, tasted it in the back of his throat and for a moment, was scared to exhale lest he banish that delicious scent with his breath.

The man flexed his cock and Sousuke's Pavlovian dinner bell clanged furiously, drool flooding out his remaining anxiety. He laid his fingers upon the dick with hesitant reverence. It pulsed in his hands, warm and very much alive. He felt drawn to it as inexorably as the moon and ocean drew one another and what shreds of doubt he'd had about his faggotry shrivelled up and blew away in the face of this awesome cock. Painful heat rose in his chest, threatening to tear out and take his ribcage with it. It wasn't the biggest nor the fattest, but in that moment he loved that dick infinitely more than he'd ever loved himself.

He kissed up and down the shaft, giddy with excitement. He wanted to map out the nerves and veins in intimate detail, gobble his cum like a man five calories from death. He pressed his tongue flat against the pisshole and decided that the stranger was old enough to be his dad or thereabouts. It was a nice thought, having an older guy to show him the ropes. Better than dicking around with an equally inexperienced lad his age and having to figure everything out on their own.

Pawing at his own junk, he curled his tongue around the bulbous cockhead and sucked it into his cheek, stroking the shaft with his free hand, groaning as the head bumped softly against his molars. From the other side of the wall came a muttered, "God _damn,_ son," and Sousuke brought the head into the fore of his mouth, nursing pre out his dickhole like a babe on a teat. He almost wished there wasn't a wall between them so he could fondle the guy's nuts, feel the sperm churning inside them before it ended up next to his dinner.

Slick lips broke, breathed, resumed crusading down the shaft. Each inch he conquered ramped up his excitement as his head edged closer, closer to the wall. When it met, the man abruptly moved and the inside of Sousuke's mouth lit up whitehot. He yanked back, licking and rubbing his fist over his tingling lips, more confused than anything. Felt like he'd been sucking on a pack of sparklers. He licked his lips a few more times, squeezing his dick. The cock in the wall stared at him. Dripped.

He dove back in with delirious fervor, toes curling in his tennies as the man rutted into him, imprinting glittering stars and showers on the backs of his eyelids. He shoved his face against the hole, bobbing and twisting, gulping lungfuls of spit and pre as his own cock drooled long, ropy strands of dickjuice onto the tile. He rocked his hips in time with the man's thrusts, wishing he had a nice fat dildo to ride. Full mouth, full ass, and a hand on his dick—fuck if that didn't sound like heaven right about now!

The man pulled out, wagging his cock just out of reach. Sousuke leaned into the wall, letting out short, wanting whines as he strained for his treat. The man chuckled and reholstered his prick in his mouth—where it belonged. Sousuke cocked his heel to one side and grinded his ass on it, grunting in pleasure as the stranger probed his tonsils. He bet he looked a proper slag. A lowdown, filthy slut with a revolving-door asshole who'd take cocks every hour every day for free. He wished he could see himself now, drooling and moaning like some porno bottom bitch, gagging for more, more until the stranger dragged him under the divider and ravaged his ass til it looked like the aftermath of a wolf attack.

He sucked and sucked until he couldn't anymore and broke away, grinding his knuckles into his cheeks to ease the tension that scorched the sides of his face, flickered at the edges of his eyesockets.

"Keep it up." The man spoke in a quiet, firm voice like a well-worn sweater that Sousuke wanted to wrap himself in and never come out. "Cocksucking's an endurance game. Every time you quit, your guy's gonna take longer to pop."

Sousuke muscled through the pain, compensating with tongue where cheeks failed, but the man didn't seem any closer to cumming than he had when they'd begun and his tongue soon ached as much as his face did. He dropped his mouth open and let the stranger do the work for a while, spit squelching and splorching obscenely as the man fucked into him like he was nothing more than a glorified blowup doll.

Something spasmed in his jaw. His mouth jerked shut. There was a long, pained hiss on the other side of the wall. Sousuke cracked his mouth open and withdrew, frantically punching his frigid jaw into motion.

He _bit_ him, you were never supposed to bite, that's what the guides said, god, he couldn't even suck cock right, now the guy was gonna bust down his door and stomp him into a fucking vegetable. He tried to get up but his legs were pins and needles, smothered under his weight. He scrambled to the corner and fumbled at the lock with one hand, rubbing feeling back into his legs with the other. If he moved fast, maybe he could get out before the guy redressed.

The cock disappeared from the hole, replaced by a pair of fingers. "Come here. I won't bite."

Sousuke clung to the door. No sane man could forgive someone for chomping at their bits.

"I'm not upset. I know an inexperienced guy when I see one. Now come here." The fingers tapped at the rim. "How about you come over when your mouth stops hurting?"

He remained in his corner and after a few minutes of silence, he heard the fleshy slap of fist on cock as the man resigned himself to finishing the job. At first, he was thankful that he'd get to live another day. Then pissed. The only reason the guy had come here was to get his cock sucked. What kind of brainless idiot settled for a hand when he could have a mouth? And more importantly, what cocksucker would ever let him?

He crawled up next to the hole and tapped the rim. The stranger fed his cock through, angling it in different directions.

"See, didn't even break the skin. No harm, no foul. It's true most guys get touchy if you so much as ding em, but me... I like a little tooth now and then. Just keep it on the head. Go on, give it a nibble."

Sousuke nipped and got a spurt of pre in return.

"That's it," the man groaned, "Do me like that."

Sousuke could see him fondling his nuts, so he figured he wasn't lying about liking it. He alternated licking and chewing on the swollen cockhead, sucking when he could, feeling the pisshole gape wide as the stranger grunted, "'m close."

The first shot slammed into the pit of his throat, hot and pungent. The second struck square in the middle of his tongue, the third and fourth spackled the roof. Sousuke sealed his lips around the head, letting his mouth swell full as the barrage tapered to a drip. He swirled the spunk to get the full dimension of its flavour: salty, a bit, but mostly bitter. He liked it. He pumped harder on his own dick, fist thumping against his groin, lava boiling in his balls. The man wedged his toe under Sousuke's tightening sack and pushed up, sandwiching it against his beating hand and said,

"Cum for me, boy."

and he lost it, shaking and shooting, making a mess all over that red leather.

—

 _Boy_.

Being but a few months shy of eighteen, he took a certain degree of offense when a so-called adult called him 'boy' or 'kid.' There wasn't much childish about him, so there was no need for them to go running their mouths at him like he was twelve. But when the man with the sharkskin shoes said it, it was different. He laid in bed, enjoying the precious moment of alone time he got while Rin was out running, fingers in his ass, heels twisting in the sheets, thinking:

_Boy._

—

Visiting the hole became part of his weekly routine. It had to, since most of his days were spent idleminded, hungry for a cock to suck on. Every Sunday, he'd throw on a ball cap and some clothes he didn't give a shit about and headed for the park. By the third week, he was more comfortable there than he was in his own dorm.

Sitting there reminded him of when he was young and retreated to the linen closet when he didn't want anybody to bother him. He'd huddle among the towels and washcloths and spare futon and listen to the house creak and groan around him, the dull thumps of his mum's footsteps echoing through the floor as she went about the housework. When he laid down and pressed his ear to the futon, he could hear the dull roar of an ocean that dragged thoughts out of his brain down to the inky depths to be stored for safekeeping until he was ready to trawl them up and think about them again.

Rin had made fun of him for it, of course, but he didn't hold it against him since Rin was so stricken with wanderlust that the notion that anyone would want to stay at home and sink into their head a while was unfathomable to him.

In the hours he spent in the second last stall, he found ways to entertain himself. He hummed a lot—he'd sung under his breath at first and stopped after someone at the urinal decided to make it a duet. He did more leisure reading in the span of several weeks than he had in several years and got chummy with the dangerously cute librarian as a result. Half the time he did absolutely nothing and that was fine too. He supposed most folks would've considered it boring, but for the little bit of time he spent in that bathroom, ancient fluorescents droning overhead, soles crackling on piss-sticky floortiles, he was real.

He got business, mind you, and he wasn't no slacker. During his weeks of service, he'd sucked off a few salarymen, three separate guys in Samezuka uniforms, and a guy he later realized was the swim team's assistant coach; gave a wristy to a tourist who talked too much; rejected a guy with dicksores the size of his thumbnail; and been paid for his services twice. (Once with cash, the other with cheeseburgers.) Each of his regulars had their pet name for him. _Baby. Sweetlips. Fagbitch._ Sometimes he got asked if he wanted to do more and always said no, even though he did.

In his spare time outside the bathroom, he'd taken to scouring the backends of the internet to assemble a master compendium of cocksucking. Had he the luxury of knowing no one would root through his desk while he was gone, he could've filled at least five or six fat notebooks with his discoveries, but he settled for bludgeoning his phone's miniscule memory with painstakingly typed memos. For each dick he sucked, he kept notes of scent, length, hardness, mouthfeel, and ten other basic characteristics and compared them from week to week. By the time he'd finished his first month of service, he could not only identify the man he'd be blowing on sight, but also a rough idea what he'd been eating the past fornight, if he'd abstained from masturbating for a while, and if he was in a low mood.

His lewd labours extended outside the realm of data aggregation as well. He refused anything but tepid water within two hours of his designated cocksucking time to avoid tampering with his palate, tied knots with his tongue, trained his gag reflex, tried blowing himself again (and pulled another muscle for the effort), and picked up the much unwated nickname "Big Banana" for his sudden interest in them. The lipbalm he now carried didn't warrant explanation, unlike the kneepads he kept under his pillow. The sheer amount of time and effort he'd poured into cocksucking would look pathetic to anyone who hadn't chucked the reins to their libido and told it to keep the whip coming, but he'd earned enough praise to make his moments of reflection sting less.

He averaged one or two gents per night, though that number was slowly ekeing up, and even on the nights when he thought no one would show, the man in sharkskin shoes would step into the far stall and offer himself up. Samehada—as he'd dubbed him—was the only client who'd visited him every single week since he'd started and he'd developed a certain fondness for both him and his cock. They'd never seen each other's faces, had made not revealing them something of a game, but Sousuke had done his fair share of showing off, letting Samehada touch his cock and abs and ass through the hole. Samehada was reluctant to let him return the favour, fueling his theory that his partner was beyond his glory days and embarrassed that he somehow wasn't as fit as a competitive swimmer entering his prime, but eventually he caved and Sousuke was pleased to discover he was soft around the edges, but strong beneath. Must be nice, being held by a guy like that. Real nice.

He never asked for it, but he dreamt about it plenty.

With their two month "anniversary" approaching, he decided he'd do something special for Samehada. In theory, it sounded great. In practice, every brainstorming session ended with a trip to the nearest liquor vending machine. He was no good at giving gifts at the expected times, let alone a nonevent without clear guidelines. It wasn't as if he could hand the guy a fruit basket and a handwritten card saying, _Thanks for letting me suck your dick._ That seemed more like a one month anniversary thing.

His phone number had been his first idea, but there was a big difference between anonymous weekly hookups and unrestricted access. For all he knew, Samehada could be a stalker or a blackmailer or a serial killer. He could be one of his teachers or worse, one of his father's coworkers. (Or even worse, his father. Thankfully the park toilets were deep enough to drown himself in if he tried hard.) How things were now was better. No faces, no problems.

Besides, the irrational part of him was dead convinced their arrangement was the foundation of a grand scheme designed to out him to the public. He'd arrive at their first meetup ready to catch a cock in every orifice and the whole town would leap out of the bushes with cameras and baseball bats.

_Look at the faggot! Look at him and laugh. Thirty-nine lashes from every man, woman, and child should be enough to set him straight. Ganbare!_

Everything else he thought of was either tacky, meaningless, or in poor taste and in the end he settled on a full colour photo of his ass, which entailed spending two harrowing minutes hovering furtively over the dinosaur the library staff had the nerve to call a printer. His phone's camera was a bit of a potato and the upscaling hadn't helped, but it got the important details across. He added _**'**_ _ **F**_ _ **or you**_ _ **♥**_ _ **'**_ at the bottom and was immediately embarrassed. He wasn't the type to add such flourishes. Even when he texted he never used emojis. Pure utility, that was him. Not hearts. He wasn't about to test his luck at the printer again, so he'd have to make do as is. Perhaps Samehada would find it endearing rather than pitiful.

In the meantime, Rin managed to stop getting high on his ego long enough to notice his absences and had taken up pestering him every waking minute of the day about them. He'd told him to drop it and Rin said he would, but come Sunday there he was, waiting to intercept him at the gate.

"Where you going?"

Sousuke brushed past him, hoping he would quit before they reached the park, but 'quit' was one of those words painfully absent from Rin's vocabulary, like 'decency' or 'moderation'.

"What, too cool for me now? Could at least tell me where you're headed." Rin flung an arm around his shoulder and leaned into his side, nudging their cheeks together in that fawning, overfamiliar way that set his head pingponging back and forth between whatever you called that feeling of wanting to punch someone's teeth in while also wishing they would carry you home for a good fuck and cuddle. "If your plans are so great, take me with you. You know I love a good time."

For a moment, he considered taking Rin to the park and locking the two of them in the far stall, not even bothering with the hole, just going down and draining him dry. He could feel those fingers snarled in his hair, Rin fucking him the way he swam, hard and fast and merciless, cock punching into his sinuses, brutalizing his ass. There were no nice words for it. It was bed-breaking, wall-banging sodomy, a down and dirty fuck with a side of anal obliteration.

Rin came alive with a preternatural glow, hair wafting flamelike as he walked, richer red than was ever seen on earth. Each lock coiled around his face, softening his sharp features the same way the jewelled scales of a venomous snake enticed touch. Promised not to bite. At some point Rin had stopped walking. The curved seam of his lips parted and formed words Sousuke couldn't hear. He felt himself falling into Rin's being, drawn towards the sensual void of his mouth. They were so close he could kiss him and say it was an accident. He could kiss him and Rin would kiss back and say he wanted more and they would run to the dorms kissing and stripping and Rin would fuck him that day and every day after and he wouldn't have to use the hole anymore unless he wanted to. Rin would never have to ask for it, could fuck him in his sleep if he liked. They didn't even have to do the relationship thing. Getting fucked was enough.

He already suspected Rin leaned that way. All he needed was a little push.

"What do you want?"

Rin knew everything else about him. He had to maintain one piece of his identity that remained unbesmirched. One space even he couldn't intrude.

"There's been a lot of weird rumours flying around lately. I don't want you getting involved in something that'll mess up your career."

Sousuke shrugged free. The weight of Rin's arm lingered. "Nothing weird about walking around town. I need space to myself once in a while."

"Well, I hope you don't mind getting space at my house, cause Ma wants to see you. Said she misses you. I think she might love you more than she loves me."

Cue him at the Matsuoka dinner table with a photo of his butthole in his pocket and another addition to his long list of Rin-based regrets. Mr Matsuoka was absent when they arrived—on one of his usual walks, according to Mrs Matsuoka—but turned up halfway through the meal, apologizing for his lateness. He heaped food before him, rambling about those pleasures both earthly and sublime that one found while wandering. The rest of the family chimed in to add their own encounters with beauty and if Sousuke had any sense for the arts, he would've dove in himself, but he'd failed every art class he'd ever taken, his favourite aesthetic was ass and dick, and as accommodating the Matsuokas were, he didn't think they would appreciate an in-depth analysis of the perennial penis-lover's question: cut or uncut?

Dinner eked on and Sousuke's nerves started to fray for want of dicking. The Matsuoka men were conspiring against him, he knew it. A casual brush against his ankle. A hand that lingered on his shoulder too long while recounting a story. Flickering smiles and whiplike banter. Bobbing Adam's apples. Licked lips. Every detail magnified a thousandfold through the lens of perverse desperation, though Mr Matsuoka was doing a number on him in particular.

Nature had been kind the day she sculpted him, giving him the debonair styling of a man that belonged at the fore of a menswear campaign rather than in the bowels of a ship beating the daylights out of a busted inboard. He was well-built, forged of lean muscle and sturdy bone, unmistakable as anything but a working man even with his handsome face. Being a tick past his prime didn't stop him from being as hale and hearty as he'd been over a decade ago and he remained a doting spouse atop that, showering his wife with casual, freely dispensed affection, flirty kisses and compliments and mischievous hands on the bum. They looked more like newlyweds than a couple who'd recently celebrated their 18th anniversary.

Everything about their relationship was alien to him. Dutiful husband, beautiful wife, that much he understood, but marriage was something people did for convenience. He'd known that since he was old enough to understand what marriage was. Men got a wife to care for them; women got a husband to support them and their children. Relationships supposedly founded on anything other than that were either government propaganda or the dopamine delusions of romantics. Not to knock the system. Society wouldn't run without it. Marriage was for breeders and that was fine. Guys like him were free of those stupid obligations. He should be grateful. Who wanted to spend eighty years with someone you merely tolerated?

Which was why the Matsuokas were a problem. They didn't have to have their marriage arranged. They didn't stick around because it was convenient. They liked each other. Sure, maybe some folks liked each other when they got together, but they didn't keep it up this long. Them being happy was like multiplying two negatives together and coming out with another negative. It made the logician in him scream.

There had to be a reason for it. Something that stoked the flames. He shoveled a wad of rice in his mouth and chewed it over. Must be the sex. Yeah. They'd already stuck a second bun in the oven before the first one had time to cool. Definitely the type that would've bred a whole warren of sharktoothed brats in an era before contraceptives. Once they were too old to fuck regularly, they would get tired of each other and shamble into their sunset years as miserable as everyone else.

The notion wasn't as comforting as he'd hoped it be.

"Sousuke, I've been curious." Mr Matsuoka peeled his hands off his wife for the first time that night. "Are you seeing anybody?"

Sousuke fumbled his chopsticks. "No. No one. Going to an all boys school doesn't exactly make it easy."

"Easy, no, but not impossible either. Handsome lad like you doesn't have to try hard to catch someone's eye. Show up at a meet and the women'll be killing each other trying to get to you. They don't care if you go to another school, that just makes it more romantic, what with the love letters and all. Plus they get bragging rights." He folded his hands over his heart and continued in fluttering falsetto, "My perfect athlete boyfriend goes to a private boarding school but makes time for _me_."

Rin groaned, exposing a wad of chewed veggies. "Dad, shut up. Don't be weird. "

"I'm not that good-looking," Sousuke muttered.

Mr Matsuoka slapped the table and leaned in, staring over the top of his glasses. "You're a liar and everyone here'll tell you the same. You're handsome from stem to stern. Isn't he?"

"Very handsome," Mrs Matsuoka agreed.

"He'll be handsomer with a couple medals around his neck," Rin said. "Career first, women later."

Mr Matsuoka leveled a critical eye on his son. "That's one way of going about it."

"It's the best way of going about it." Rin speared his fish, breaking it up into tiny pieces.

They stared at each other, mechanically inserting food into their mouths. Jaws working slow. Mrs Matsuoka offered to refill their drinks. They rejected. She resumed ferrying snow peas around her bowl in silence.

Hoping to settle the matter, Sousuke said, "Dating's not my top priority right now."

"Good. As your Captain, I'd have to kill you if it was." Rin squeezed Sousuke's thigh, reasserting their solidarity. "Sick of these jokers trying to get out of practice early so they can go horse around with their girlfriends. I run a swim team, not a lounge."

"Not everyone wants to compete at a professional level, honey." Mrs Matsuoka clasped her husband's hand for a moment. "Let them enjoy themselves."

"If they're not going to be serious about practice, why even bother showing up?"

Wanting no part of wherever this conversation was going, Sousuke bent in search of his chopsticks. One he found under his chair, the other had bounced further afield. He strained after it and in doing so, beheld a glorious sun in the horizon of Mr Matsuoka's thighs. It was as radiant as the dawn after a long dark, bringing springtime early to his frost-starved soul. He groped blindly for his chopstick, found it, then flung it beneath Mr Matsuoka's chair to have a good excuse to get a closer look. Would anyone mind if he took care of Daddy Matsuoka or was that bad table manners?

Mr Matsuoka's hand came down and settled on his bits. Preserving his modesty, Sousuke figured. Couldn't corrupt the innocence of his son's friend, never mind if the friend in question was busy wishing he could wriggle down Daddy's dickhole and live in his balls. Then with a single stroke, modesty was slashed off the agenda. Mr Matsuoka's cock swole fuller, fatter as he toyed with it, bulging against his fly like an eager dog begging to be let out to play. Sousuke almost whimpered with want. He must've thought he was too busy looking to pay attention. Or he got into exhibitionism. That would be hot. He could be his cabin boy, help relieve that high seas stress. Banging by the docks, getting railed on deck—

"Any luck down there?" Mr Matsuoka asked in his usual playful lilt.

Sousuke shot up, smashing his head into the table. He resurfaced surrounded by laughter.

"What, can't even touch your toes without getting lost? I'm gonna have to put a leash on you one of these days." Good ol' Rin, always ready with that dash of wound salt.

Mr Matsuoka brought his hand back up with a wry, catlike smile. "Sounds like you bonked yourself pretty good. I can get you an ice pack if you want it."

"I'm good," Sousuke lied and went back to picking at the rest of his meal.

The instant Rin decided they should leave, Sousuke spat out his farewells and leapt out of his chair.

"I have dessert," Mrs Matsuoka announced. "Thought I'd try my hand at a cola cake."

Sousuke stared at the door. Only a few steps to freedom. There was a way to get out of this without hurting anybody's feelings.

"Stop trying to make him fat, Ma." Rin stood. "Come on, we have to get back before curfew."

Mr Matsuoka intercepted before they could get anywhere, mouth set in a firm line, arms folded. Rin tried going around, got blocked.

"Sousuke, go on ahead and help yourself. Rin, I think we need to have a talk." Mr Matsuoka headed for the stairs. He paused at the first step, glancing over his shoulder. "Don't make me say it twice."

Rin trudged after him and Sousuke sat and took his milk and cake like a man.

They returned a few minutes later, Rin slumping back into his seat looking about as miserable as Sousuke felt. His balls were full of molten lead and ached something fierce. Mr Matsuoka licked his fork— _wet hot tongue digging between the tines, canines reflected in the glistening metal_ —and complimented the chef. Sousuke distracted himself by slowly clenching and unclenching his thighs. It drew a questioning look and a nod towards the bathroom from Rin. He didn't get it. Never could. Rin was decent. Rin had standards. If he could slide his fingers behind Sousuke's ears and pry open his dome, he'd be sickened by what he saw. How bad he was jonesing. _Fucking pervert. I'm requesting a room transfer the second we get back. You're sick, man, sick._ And of course, Sousuke would curl up gibbering like a baby as the DTs set in and the fibres of the tatami mat crawled under his fingernails, sliding through his veins to prickle his brain and the men would come take him away to a nice hospital and maybe he could find a doctor there who could give him the dick he needed. Food, water, shelter, dick. That was his life now.

Once Rin had gone to bed, he could sneak out of the dorms and try his luck at the hole, but he already knew that'd be a waste of time. Nobody, not even Samehada, would wait that long for him to show and everything in Iwatobi shut down by 22:00, so he wouldn't get any walk-ins either. Short of eradicating what scant claims he had to human dignity and whoring himself door to door, he could only think of one way to quash his lust.

Between keeping the swim team running, maintaining his class rank, and pushing his body to ever higher limits, Rin had to make certain sacrifices. Things got backed up. Needs weren't met. And sometimes when Sousuke returned from a late night leak, he'd find Rin with a hand down his daks. Rin never stayed dressed long, wriggling out of his pyjama bottoms bit by bit, letting out tiny, devastating grunts and whispers as he humped away, trying to seduce his hapless admirer into crossing the line he'd carefully drawn between them. Sousuke stayed his hand from his inevitable hardon aside from tucking it into his waistband, cockhead grinding against the elastic as seconds stretched to hours.

An uptick of breath, a few short bucks, and Rin started squirting. There was a perverse satisfaction in standing there and watching him ruin whatever underwear he'd made the mistake of wearing that day. He stood there breathing hot and slow, dick flexing, focus zeroing in on that spurting cock until it stopped and Rin drowsily smacked his lips and went still. Every iota of his being ached to lick it up, lick his filthy, cumslick cock and tongue his pungent asshole and worship every inch of his gorgeous body. But he was patient.

He'd lay in his bunk and wait for Rin to wake. Despite the obscene largesse of his nighttime showings, Rin never seemed to completely drain himself while he slept and had to yank another one out before leaving on his morning run. When the coast was clear, Sousuke hunched over the trashcan and rooted for his prize. He liked to think of the cumrags as a gift, tissue roses for a closet homo. Most of the time he was able to get to them quick enough that he could pick them apart and get straight to the good stuff. Otherwise he just sucked on em. Every now and again he got lucky and Rin left his dirty underwear behind and he'd suck on those too. If he was feeling extra piggish, he'd stuff a tissue or two up his ass (but not the underwear, that would be too hard to explain).

It was the kind of desperation he'd thought himself above now that he had better outlets, but a pig with options was still a pig.

As he passed through the genkan, pretending to listen to Rin's bitching, his eyes snagged on something in his peripheral. Tucked into one of the lesser used pockets of the Matsuoka family's shoe divider was a pair of sharkskin shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I split the first chapter in two in order to improve readability, since it is rather text-dense. Did minor edits within the story itself as well. [Also realized there was an entire line of dialogue that somehow got dropped in the transition from my files to AO3; it has now been restored.] Previous end note will now be found in Ch2. 
> 
> I'm still not used to writing multichapter stories, so figuring out what chapter length should be is a bit annoying. I try to keep a strong division between scenes so it's easier to pick up if you have to stop, but I realize that may not be enough for most readers. With Spookfish, I tend to write chapters in such a way that they encompass an entire "episode" of narrative [hence the chapter titling] and they're fairly dialogue-heavy, so it's easier to keep up the pace despite a hefty wordcount compared to something like the beginning of Tap Down Low, which has significantly longer stretches with no dialogue compared to later on in the story.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 2 December 2017  
> \- 匿名重工業


	2. Chapter 2

He waited in the farthest stall, latch only drawn far enough to keep the door closed. Anyone who wanted at him could come in with a well-placed knock. It was a dead night, no clients to be seen, and for once, he preferred it that way. He'd been stewing on the shoe sighting for a week now and didn't need no one distracting him. There was a way to calculate these kinds of things, had to be. He'd been all through every statistics book he could find in the library — _you really like maths, don't you?_ had said the librarian after he'd checked out the lot—but they hadn't done him any good.

At the usual time, footsteps crossed the tile. Heel toe heel toe click click, steady. Them there shoes, the red sharkskin shoes (no realistic chance that there could be more than one pair in town, no matter how badly he wanted the numbers to lie to him) paused at the second last stall. It opened. His breath stuttered, heart cracking against his ribs. The shoes pivoted. Took a broad step. Landed in front of his stall. Samehada tapped at the door, at first so soft that he could barely hear it, then building up:

 _1-e- &-a-2-e-&-a-1-&-2-&_ :|

Sickness lurched up Sousuke's throat. He knew that pattern. Had felt it tapped into his and Rin's stomachs many a time in their early elementary years, heard it against the wood of the dining room table, rhythm to crinkling newspaper melody. He should leave. Or tell him to leave. He should tell him this was a mistake and he didn't want to do this anymore and Samehada would leave and he'd never have to know. You could hypothesize as much as you want, draw any kind of conclusion that fit your narrative if your premises logically entailed it, but so long as you didn't _know_ , there was room for deniability, implausible as it may be. He was going to tell him to leave. That would be the sensible thing to do.

He leaned forward, undid the latch, and said nothing.

Mr Matsuoka walked in with a smile playing on his lips. "I was wondering if you'd ever catch on."

Sousuke stared at his shoes, trying to figure out what the right thing to feel was. Embarrassed, perhaps, or scared a bit. But, having the knowledge he did now, he felt neither. As fast as his anxiety had come on, it faded away, as if he'd gotten exactly what he'd asked for on his birthday and realized it wasn't as big of a deal as it had seemed. Knowing who had been on the other side of the hole didn't change anything. They were a cock and a mouth. Nothing more.

And yet.

"Did you know it was me?"

"Course I did. You've come to my house however many times and you think I don't know what your shoes look like?" Mr Matsuoka laughed, raking a hand through his hair. "Not a lotta local boys rockin them kinda kicks. I mean, I was surprised, but I've always cast my lot with the wind." He twisted his hand in semblance of a lazy breeze. "Wherever it leads, so shall it be."

"But you're married."

Mr Matsuoka's smile deepened into one of unadulterated fondness as he leaned against the door and sank into a sea of memories. Honeymoon. Childbirths. Anniversaries come and gone. Returning home to a warm dinner on the table and a fridge plastered over with crayon art. Whatever else married life entailed. He did a second pass of his hair, drawing the flyaways into order. The lights hummed on.

The longer he stayed quiet, the bigger Sousuke's uncertainty grew. He shouldn't be here. Neither of them should. He should leave, for both their sakes. No. No. It wasn't his place to be worrying about other people's relationships. Mr Matsuoka was a grown man, he made his own decisions. If he wanted to fuck things up for himself, that was on him. He bet he wasn't even the first person he'd messed around with. A guy didn't wake up one day and decide that he wanted to start banging men behind his wife's back. Especially not when they were married to someone as nice as Mrs Matsuoka. Especially not when they looked so happy. It wasn't his fault. It must've always been this way.

Mr Matsuoka resurfaced, cradling Sousuke's cheek with his wedded hand. His ring was cold. "Let me worry about that."

_Thank god, it's not my fault._

Mr Matsuoka had working hands, sandpaper callouses and nails blunt as a file, made rough by years of hauling nets and unloading cargo. Sousuke couldn't remember how many times he'd gone down to the docks as a boy to wait for the boats to come in so he could watch the fishermen disembark, sweating and stinking of fish and brine and excruciatingly handsome all the same. There were a fair few classic bears, but the ones who weren't built like that were sturdy in their own way, men you could look at once and know they could be counted on to get a job done right. They'd hail his arrival as if he was a perpetually late member of the crew and ruffle his hair and slap him on the back and give him sips of shochu for helping bring in the catch. _Little Greenhorn,_ they called him, _too busy daydreaming to get anywhere on time_. He'd learnt their knots and shanties and the kind of jokes that would make any respectable woman's ears bleed, as well as how to mend nets, fix motors, and cook the most delicious fish he ever ate with only a campstove and a well-placed pinch of seasoning. No matter how crude their language got or how many stinkfingers he'd been subject to, they endeared him in a way that his father's stodgy officemates never had and by the time puberty hit, he wanted nothing more than to be fucked by a hard-handed blue collar man.

He reached for Mr Matsuoka's belt and worked it loose. Mr Matsuoka closed the door behind him.

In the closeness of the stall, Sousuke was overwhelmed by that nostalgic burn of cologne that coloured every childhood memory worth remembering, rising strongest back when he'd clung to that fragrant neck after he'd sprained his ankle playing on deck. Mr Matsuoka had carried him home, telling him how brave he was for not crying, that he was proud of him for being strong. The heady scent of sweat and musk emanating from Mr Matsuoka mixed with mint-camphor-clove and intensified as Sousuke stripped him of his underwear and brought his half-hard prick to life, wondering if he was proud of him now.

The cock hit his tongue. He could slut it up as much as he wanted. No walls dictating how deep he could go or the angles he could attack. Nothing stopping him from going hogwild. He buried his fingers in Mr Matsuoka's soft, meaty ass and plunged to the root, moaning as the cockhead tickled the back of his throat. Spitbubbles sputtered at the corners of his mouth as he worked slick and sloppy, eager for every inch. He pulled back and nuzzled his balls, nose brushing against long, gritty pubes as he sucked one egg-sized testicle into his mouth then the other, jacking him off with the hand that wasn't occupied with his own crank.

"That's it." Mr Matsuoka stroked Sousuke's hair, sending constellations of light across his scalp. "Good boy. Very good."

It was like drugs, those words. They worked through his neurons in slow, liquid fire and spread through his system. Snippets of dreams and blissful reality mixed as he drifted in and out of a cocksucking nod. come to tonguing the head. kissing heavy balls. at some point one of his hands had wandered to his ass, digging into his crack to rub his warm hairy fuckhole. the emptiness ached. needed to root it out the only way he knew how.

Drool sluiced off his lip as he stood and dropped trou, shoving his briefs to his knees, waiting for the command he'd longed to hear for years.

Mr Matsuoka broke into a savage grin. "Bend over."

Sousuke braced himself on the toilet. Two calloused fingers pushed past his lips and scoured his mouth, collecting spit and scum. He sucked hungrily at them, good of a proxy as a cock as anything else. He wished his first time didn't have to be with an empty mouth. That would be the dream: two men, one on either end, wrecking and discarding him wet-lipped and fucked out on the floor. Someone more well-adjusted might suggest he seek professional help, but he was a miserable pervert and knew it. No sense in pretending to be anything else.

He didn't have much time to wish for that second cock before Mr Matsuoka hooked his spitty fingers into his fuckhole.

"This your first time?"

Clutching the seat so hard he thought it'd break, Sousuke nodded.

"Figured. Not exactly drowning in willing guys out here. Usually gotta go further east. Or prearrange it." His hand twisted, fingers curling a _come hither_. "You open up pretty well for a first-timer. Don't think I'll have to use too much lube on you."

Sousuke forced himself to focus on the toilet as Mr Matsuoka prepped. The sight of that gorgeous cock getting ready to plow him would be too much for his heart to bear. His first cock. A few months ago it was nothing more than a wisp of a dream and here it was, on the verge of plowing into his virgin ass, squirting him full of the hot, tasty cum he'd grown to love. Lube poured down his crack, smeared into his asshole, pushed inside him. He moaned low in his throat, shifting from foot to foot as he pushed his ass higher, silently thanking Rin for being the sperm that made it.

A slick hand spread his cheeks. Something nudged against his hole. Not fingers. Sweat broke out in clusters on the small of his back. The cock pushed in at a glacial pace, slowing as he let out a long hiss. It wasn't buried more than five, six centimetres, but felt ten times that. Nothing he'd taken had ever made him feel so _full._

Mr Matsuoka closed his hand around Sousuke's chin and angled his head up for a kiss. "Hanging in there?"

Sousuke nodded with a breathless mumble, feeling that cock pulsing inside him, bigger than fingers and better by far. He squeezed, trying to goad him into moving, but Mr Matsuoka held him in suspense, stroking his cock, playing on his hypersensitive nerves. Mr Matsuoka told him to be patient, voice resonating goldwarmdark in his ear, sending a shiver from the tip of his head down to his toes, pecker jerking and drooling pre in Mr Matsuoka's rough hands.

Mr Matsuoka pressed his mouth closer and whispered, "God, you're adorable," and set him shivering all over again. He pulled out and slowly pressed the tip back in, teasing his rim with shallow thrusts, wearing that same goddamn smirk that drove Sousuke batty when it was on Rin, yet did nothing but get his nuts churning now.

"Sure you don't want to keep things simple? We could go back to the usual." Slow in, slow out. "Or I could yank your crank and do mine after." Hand twisting on his cock and oh, if this wasn't torture, he didn't know what was. "Anal might still be a bit much for you."

Sousuke stared at the wall and thought about his pride. It was a fragile, birdlike thing safeguarded behind miles of bars and barbed wire. He cradled it in his hands, wondering if this was worth it. _Don't do it,_ it cried. _Dignity is better than dick._

He threw it down and crushed it dead.

"Whatever you want me to say, I'll say it. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. If you wanna piss on me or beat me up or make me suck your toes, that's fine, I don't care. Just fuck me." He didn't care how desperate he sounded. If Mr Matsuoka didn't want to give it to him, he'd find a way to take it.

Mr Matsuoka paused—probably thinking about what a freak he was—then composed himself. "Well, when you put it like that..."

His hips snapped forward. Lightning exploded in the back of Sousuke's skull as his innards liquefied, scrambled hot, clawed into his throat. He howled into his teeth, heart kickstuttering, guts spasming wildly. His head dropped as he struggled to catch his breath and noticed his dick hanging soft and innocent between his legs, not a spot of cum to be seen. Mr Matsuoka pulled out, booming with laughter as his hand crashed down on Sousuke's head for a tousle.

"Sonuvabitch! If there was ever anything to make me feel like a champ, it's giving a hot young buck an anal orgasm. Don't know if I'll be able to keep up if you do that every time I stick you." He slotted his cock neatly back inside. "But I've always liked a challenge."

Sousuke swayed on his feet, trying to work his stupid mouth into the obvious question.

"Anal orgasm, look it up when you go home. Prostate orgasm too, while you're at it. Sure would like to give you a few of those." His laughter dwindled to a chuckle. "God, I love the internet."

"Yeah, it's great, hurry up," Sousuke muttered, adding, "Please," as an afterthought. Was it too much to ask for a quick one and done?

"No offense, kiddo, but if I went at my normal pace right now, this—" He gave Sousuke's ass a cordial smack. "—would rip my pecker clean off. That's how hard you were squeezing. I like a tight fit as much as any other guy, but you gotta relax."

"I'm relaxed. I can take it."

"You're not relaxed, you're a horny little bastard biting off more than he can chew. I'll give it to you when you're good and ready and not a second sooner. My dick, my rules. Understand?"

Sousuke clicked his tongue. Seventeen years old and getting scolded like a kid. "Yeah."

"Don't 'yeah' me, boy. Not every guy you meet's gonna be nice and believe you me, you're not gonna like it as much as you think you will."

"Yes sir."

Mr Matsuoka's cock twitched. Not so considerate after all.

"You gotta learn how to give your ass. Can't force it."

"Then teach me," Sousuke wetted his lips with his tongue, "sir."

"You know," Mr Matsuoka said, shoving forward. "I used to think you were a nice boy. Good friend to Rin. Always willing to give us a hand at work. When I realized it was you on the other side of the hole, I almost left cause I thought you were too sweet to fuck. But you're not. You're nothing but a filthy cocksucker."

Joy rushed through Sousuke in a hot, effervescent wave. Someone finally got it.

"But I dig that. The world needs men like you." Mr Matsuoka's rough hands roamed across his back in methodical circles, working out the tension. His cock pumped slow and steady. Not the full length, but deeper than before. "So here's how this is gonna go: you're gonna be my personal cocksucker. I'm gonna give you all the dick you ever dreamed of and you're gonna let me ream this hole of yours whenever I want, however I want. How's that sound?"

"I want it. Wanna be your cocksucker."

The last bastion of his resistance crumbled and Mr Matsuoka slid in like a well-oiled piston, reaching spots Sousuke never could alone. Warm, twitching balls pressed against his ass, promising a reward for the agonizing wait. Mr Matsuoka started slow and picked up the pace, never letting him get too used to one particular rhythm, flipping from staccato snaps to deep, bruising hits that shoved the breath from his lungs. Each breath came thick as syrup, Sousuke's sweaty fingers slipping and grasping at the porcelain, growling obscenities as his cock slapped against his stomach.

"You _like_ that, don't you, boy? You like how I fuck you."

"Yesgodfuck, I—" Mr Matsuoka jabbed deep, earning a hard, involuntary clench that descended into another gutclenching anal orgasm. "—ah! ah! fuckfuckfuck!"

They were coming hard and fast now, crashing one into another, each sending a spike of heat that erupted up his spine and wound the tension in his nuts a notch tighter. His nails scrabbled at the seat, trying to purge the magma from his blood, huffing and furiously biting into his lip to suppress the shameful noises fighting to get out, choking on his spit. Mr Matsuoka fucked a scream out of him and that was it, he lost all semblance of control. His entire body went into revolt, hands and legs jerking as if guided by a mad puppeteer, joints straining to hold together, sweating and swearing and shaking, spitting a slew of pleas and groans as his brain melted onto the floor and it was beautiful, beautiful, to not have to worry about anything for once, to be debauched and unafraid of it. He tried to fix his posture, staggered, lurched to one side. Mr Matsuoka seized him by the waist and hoisted him up.

"Hold on for me a little longer."

"Gnh...uhn...uhn, ah!" Sousuke garbled, fingers gnarling empty air.

"Come on, stand up. I know you can do it."

Sousuke forced his spasming legs to straighten out, one hand fisted in Mr Matsuoka's shirt, the other clinging to his arm. Blood roared in his ears, head sketch-scumbled and crazy, the fluorescents bright, cicada-humming. He leaned back, blindly searching for his reward.

"That's it. That's a good boy. You take that cock so good," Mr Matsuoka murmured, kissing his hungry mouth. His free hand pulled on Sousuke's cock with long, twisting strokes, pinching up beads of precum from his cockhole and smearing them across his swollen prickhead. "I'm gonna give you what you want. Gonna cum all inside you. God, I'm gonna—"

Mr Matsuoka thrust once, twice more and shot hard, breath spitting hot into his ear, _"Cum for me, boy."_

and Sousuke snapped, mouth twisted in a silent scream, sick with headrush, practically pissing cum, chest heaving fuckhole clenching squeezing hands spasming broken whimpering and for a second, he ceased to exist

he gasped back to life like a half-drowned man, dizzy and sick. There was a godawful ache in his head, his throat rasped hot when he breathed and his limbs were in varying states of numbness, but Mr Matsuoka held him up, held him close and it was so far beyond what he'd dreamt that it seemed a joke. He had a hard time placing the feeling. Happy, but in a specific way. How he got when he went to the docks. Kind of like everything would be alright as long as he was here.

Copper tinged the back of his throat, reminding him of his place.

He reluctantly let Mr Matsuoka pull out, too tired and aware of their circumstances to put up a fight. There was cum oozing out his ass, bleeding slow down his taint, down his ballsack. He chased a few drops with his fingertips and scooped them back into his asshole to prolong the warmth. Stripes of jizz laid splattered across the seat, his own punctuation mark on the night. He dropped to his knees and sucked the frigid porcelain clean, wondering how many men he could bag if he went out like this, cumslicked, breath heady with spunk. There might've been something salvageable about him before, but not now. This was who he was—made to live on his back, head empty, ass full.

His head drifted further into the bowl, basking in the chill. He didn't bother trying to get up. He was fine like this. The toilet was his friend now. They had lots in common. Quiet. Slow to warm to strangers. A willing receptacle for the bodily fluids of others. If somebody took it out and put him in its place, no one would even notice.

"Don't pass out on me," Mr Matsuoka said, dragging him to his feet.

His legs wobbled and tangled like a fawn taking its first dainty steps as he was guided to the toilet to sit.

How filthy he must look to a guy like him. Handsome. Respectable. Head of a loving household with a view of the sea. And here he was, nothing more than a random slut.

"You alright?"

His head lolled, legs dropping wider. Cum pattered into the bowl like the first hint of a gentle rain.

"Be right back." Mr Matsuoka zipped up and disappeared, leaving the door ajar.

He wasn't coming back. He knew he wouldn't. Nobody hung around a slut once they'd gotten what they wanted from it. What they had was a transaction, plain and simple.

He closed his eyes and waited for the world to move on.

 

"Still alive? I don't want to have to dispose of any bodies today."

Cold plastic pressed against his mouth and he jolted into consciousness. Mr Matsuoka stood before him with a bottled water. Sousuke's arms twitched weakly. Still useless. He opened his mouth and grunted. Mr Matsuoka cradled his head against his firm chest and set the water to his lips. Sousuke latched onto the bottle and took great gulping sucks. He broke for air, burped. Mr Matsuoka recapped the bottle, dabbing away the spit-up with his sleeve.

"Attaboy. No one tells you how thirsty you get after a fuck. Pick up a snack when you go home, it's on me." Mr Matsuoka dug a ¥500 coin out of his wallet and dropped it into Sousuke's pocket. "Now let's get you cleaned up."

He crouched and peeled open Sousuke's sticky ass, thumbing at the wet, puffy hole. Sousuke tried to hold it in, but Mr Matsuoka's tongue speared him, sucking and scraping out his hard-won cum. He did it. He was a proper fag now. It was nothing like the horror stories he'd read online, no beating or anal tearing or being forcefed drugs and left in an alley to die. He broke into a thin laugh, heat trickling down his cheeks. Again came the sleeve, mopping up the sweat and drool.

"It's okay. I remember my first time with a guy. It's intense, right?"

His head bobbed in mute agreement. Mr Matsuoka finished cleaning him up and sat on the floor.

"I'll stay until you're ready to go. Wouldn't want some weirdo to take advantage of you. Let me know if you need more water." He took a swig himself and checked the time. "Man, I'm gonna be in so much trouble when I get home. We were gonna have hot pot. It's not as good when you heat it the second time."

Sousuke watched him peck at his smartphone. He expected there would be an apology at some point, a plea to not tell his family. He might not regret it now, but preserving a marriage was more important than maintaining a side fling. Breeders stayed with breeders and guys like him just got to borrow them once in a while. If only he'd played along, he could've had him for the entire year. He'd ruined a perfectly good thing, and for what? Stupid curiosity.

Story of his life, always fucking things up for himself.

Mr Matsuoka scraped away a crust of spittle flecking Sousuke's cheek.

"You know, an old dog like me's got plenty of tricks to show you, if you're willing to learn."

The ring was but a faint imprint amidst his fingers.

—

The weekend seemed half an eternity away. Sousuke hauled himself out of the pool and headed for the locker room. Rather than hit the showers, he dug his phone out of his gym bag and parked himself in front of the mirror, trying to find the best angle. He tucked his thumb into his skins and peeled the front down, showing off a dark thatch of pubic hair and just enough cock to be legally obscene. He snapped the pic.

_**Thought I'd send you something to make it a little easier to make it through the end of the day.** _

"Stop making kissy-faces at yourself and get your ass in gear! I'm not waiting for you again!" Rin hollered from across the locker room.

The reply came during dinner. He glanced around the cafeteria before opening the attachment. Toraichi stood at the edge of the docks, waders bunched around his hips, prick jutting out over the water.

_Only making things harder, I'm afraid._

"The fuck're you smiling at?" Rin leaned across the table, trying to catch a peek.

Sousuke stuck his phone back in his pocket. "Nothing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a nice, supportive dad. [Sousuke is in good hands.](https://youtu.be/aSEDr-R7I0A)
> 
> This was initially written to be a quick fapfic, but as usual, things got out of hand. The summary will make more sense with chapter two, since that's where the bulk of the plot is. I was going to hold off on posting Ch1 until I'd finished Ch2 but I got real fuckin sick of staring at it and my dearth of updates. Ch2 will be done when it's done or when I'm tired of looking at it, whichever comes first. By the way, here is a beautiful poem I wrote about Sousuke while editing:
> 
> S _lut! Slut! Filthy whore,_  
>  _got an ass like a revolving door,_  
>  _He'll suck you til your dick's all sore,_  
>  _He takes your load and begs for more_  
>  _Bottom bitch pride,_  
>  _lube at his side_  
>  _and an asshole that's 'bout ten miles wide_
> 
> It is currently untitled, please feel free to suggest titles in the comments.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 2 December 2017  
> \- 匿名重工業


	3. Chapter 3

_"You need to meet more people. It'll be fun!"_ Or so Rin, the eternal, insufferable extrovert, had said when he goaded Sousuke into signing up for twitter.

@yamazakissk was a sordid affair, nothing more than a milquetoast shadow of his daily life. He liked pictures of men with great physiques, adding the occasional "nice" or "solid". He retweeted pictures of women his friends retweeted and added nothing. He never posted content of his own despite Rin's near constant nagging. Browsing his timeline became a crawling torture of cat gifs, food porn, and strangers faking interest in the lives of people they only half knew and after a couple weeks, he shut it down and made a new, anonymous account.

@sanosuke90 was an unabashed flirt, openly fantasizing about of the kind of men he wished would ream his faggoty fuckhole, woofing at gruff labourers and salt and pepper salarymen who DMed him photos of their cocks and told him he was the kind of guy they'd love to take under their wing. Between his filthy mouth and racy selfies, he had half a dozen daddies vying for his attention on any given day, but once he started talking to them, his bravado crumbled and after a few lukewarm back and forths they inevitably turned their attention elsewhere.

He checked his notifications and got a white hit of satisfaction. His latest selfie was gaining traction big time, boosted by a few heavyhitters in the camboy scene. It featured him, leg hitched up on a sink basin, ass spread, cock hanging in plain sight. _My friend told me I have a nice ass but I think it would look a lot nicer with your dick in it..._ He'd shopped a smiley face over his own to maintain some semblance of privacy, but no one in the comments was complaining.

@yun_85: _ur hot. u have feet pics?_

@fistfuckbear: _Goddamn what are they feeding high schoolers these days? You're high school, right? I like high school boys... ;)_

@hollywoodhomoX: _unf, just hump me already_

@bumbatty: _send me a pair of ure dirty undies. ill pay u. pls respond._

He tapped from reply to reply, trying to figure out who he should test his luck with first when his phone chimed with a new text.

 _Look at this weird fish we found._ Attached was a photo of Toraichi on deck, holding a hideous amalgamation of fins, eyes, and slime fresh from the south side of hell.

_**What the fuck is that?** _

_95% sure it's an alien. We put it on ice and Tanaka said he'd drive it up to an ichthyologist he knows to try to ID it. If it's a new species, I'll let you name it._

_**I'm honoured.** _

_Cuties like you deserve the finer things in life. Wealth... prestige... ugly fish naming rights..._

_**Sounds like an exciting day.** _

_It's the most eventful thing that's happened all week._

_Wanna meet up this weekend?_

_**You read my mind.** _

His second account soon followed the first to the grave.

—

Toraichi arrived with a pack of beers and the explanation, "Tonight we're breaking all the rules except murder," and whisked him away to the nearest shrine.

Without his other head running the show, Sousuke realized there should be something odd about meeting with a man who was not only old enough to be his father, but who'd watched him grow from a lanky little boy to the cusp of adulthood. If it'd been a complete stranger, he could be written off as having garden variety daddy issues by whatever shrink he would inevitably be ordered to see when he was older, but this was different. Loaded with baggage. He bet Freud had a word for their kind of arrangement.

He wondered how Toraichi would take being called daddy, would he like it the way his twitter groupies did? _Fuck me, daddy._ Sheer wrongness wrenched through his stomach. No, best not do that. Not now, anyway.

He struggled to get his stubby nails over the tab of his beer and snapped it clean off, leaving a smooth, unbroken top. "Mr Matsuoka—"

"Here." Toraichi stabbed it open with his keys. "And it's Toraichi when it's just us two."

"Toraichi." It sat strangely on his tongue. They hadn't met face to face since they'd unmasked themselves, so he hadn't had a chance to try it out.

Toraichi laughed softly and took a seat on the stone steps. "C'mere cutie. Tell me how it's been."

Sousuke sat beside him and took a long swig and set the can down. He told him how school was going, that swimming was fine and Rin was a pain, but what was new about that. He told him about exams and teachers he wished would get fired and how their coach was a slavedriver when he wanted to be. He complained about how the dorm was never quiet enough for his liking but that the food on campus was good. Felt stupid somehow, talking kid shit to a grown man. He emptied his first beer and took a second to Toraichi's whistle of approval, trying to think of something unrelated to his school life. He came up short. Resorted to blabbering about music, what bands he'd been following lately, what songs he liked. No matter what he said or how much he rambled, Toraichi kept on smiling, encouraging him to talk a little more, a little more. He didn't think he'd ever talked this much to a single person before. Ninety percent of his conversations with Rin ended with him as a soundboard for whatever was on Rin's mind. _Yep. Uh-huh. I hear you._ He was at the bottom of his second beer before he realized it.

He toed at a few dead leaves huddled against his shoe, sending them rattling into the dark. "I know I'm boring you. Let's do something else."

Toraichi's wiry arm settled over his shoulder, pulling him in. Energy thrummed from his hanging fingertips, making the hair on the back of Sousuke's neck prickle every time they brushed against his chest.

"Do I look bored to you?"

"No, sir," he replied, surprised he meant it.

"Then don't go assuming I am. I've been looking forward to this all week."

He didn't know whether it was the alcohol or the way Toraichi looked at him, but there was an uncomfortable warmth simmering in his chest. "Me too."

The arm slid away, retreating to Toraichi's lap. Sousuke watched it dangle there and longed to wriggle under it and plant his nose in the crook of his neck like a dog that hadn't been pet enough.

"Nice to get out of the house, you know. Especially when you're an old fart like me and don't have the liberty of doing that too much anymore." Toraichi laughed and tossed back the rest of his beer in one go. "Gone are the days when I could run around town til two in the morning. You do much of that?"

Sousuke shrank into his shirt, leg joggling. "Nah. Not really."

"That's fine. You got a good head on you. Too smart to be doing that nonsense. But it's fun to be bad once in a while."

"Yeah."

"I'm jealous of Rin though. I went to school with a bunch of potato-faced bastards. If I had friends that looked like you, I..." Toraichi trailed off, picking at his thumbnail. He shrugged, letting his arms collapse onto his legs with a smack. "I dunno. Lost my train of thought for a minute there. Getting more senile by the day, I tell you what."

"We've got our share of ugly guys at Samezuka."

"Hard to notice that when I could be looking at you. I'm serious, if you went to a mixed school, the girls'd be on you like ticks on a fat dog. That's how they were with me and I'm only half as handsome as you."

"Sure you don't mean twice?"

"Flattery will get you everywhere, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise."

Toraichi's hand slid up his shirt, mouth closing over his to smother his gasp and he leaned back, half-crawling and shimmying up the steps to the shrine cause _not on the stairs you're gonna hurt your back, god i waited all week for this_ rutting and unbuttoning, the buckle of a brown leather belt clacking against stone.

—

The hard black plastic of Rin's clipboard cracked on contact with the locker room floor. He kicked it into the nearest row of lockers for good measure.

"God, I hate these idiots!" Rin squatted down and pried the clipboard from the concrete, rifled through the papers attached to it for a moment, then snapped it in half against the ground. "Why can't they be gay and date someone on the team? At least then they'd show up."

"That'd just bring all the relationship drama here." Sousuke picked up one of the shards and lobbed it into the trash.

"And I'd knock some sense into them! 'Captain, I can't swim with Akira because he said such and such'—you're getting in that pool and staying in there until you finish your eight-hundred or you drown, you goddamn fart. 'It's our three month anniversary so we were going to go to the hot springs'—no you're fucking not, we have a meet." Rin sighed into his knees, arms hanging loose beside him. "They've got scholarships on the line. I don't get it."

"Everyone's finished with warmups," Nitori called from the relative safety of the door. "What should we do next?"

"Run some Tarzans, I'll be out in a tick. And get me another clipboard."

Rin unclipped the papers and threw the rest of the mutilated board in the trash. He ran the tap on the sink that was forever clogging until it was half full, then stuck his face into the water and screamed into the basin. He lifted his head and squeezed the extra water out of his hair. Took a deep breath. Forced a smile.

"Motivational enough?" he asked the mirror.

"I could lift a mountain single-handed just looking at you." Sousuke slid his finger into the wet clump of red glued to the centre of Rin's forehead and parted it down the middle, sweeping each half where it should be.

"Good." He leaned into Sousuke's side for a moment. "Don't ever get a girlfriend. I need someone in my life who can see past the end of his dick."

"I won't," Sousuke assured him.

—

He was bellydown on the beach with an assload of cum when Toraichi said, "Suppose I should teach you about condoms at some point."

Sousuke sucked the bitter wetness off the end of Toraichi's cock, head laying heavy in his lap. "Bit late for that. And I already know I'm supposed to use them."

"I'll bring some for you next time."

"Save your money. I don't want them." He lazily tongued Toraichi's cockhole, catching a faint earthen tang.

"There's nasty stuff out there. I don't want you to get sick."

Sounded more like he didn't want to get himself sick. "Who cares? You're clean, right?"

"I care and I am." Toraichi rose, knees creaking. He moved a few steps away and pissed, approximating a circle in the sand. "You still visit the hole?"

"Yeah. But it's not like I'm fucking those guys. Just blowing em."

"You don't magically stop getting bugged because you're not taking it up the ass." He zipped. "Forget next time, I'll buy you a box tonight. Call me when you use them up and I'll buy you another."

"I can get them myself. I have money."

"You've had money the past few months and haven't done it."

"Cause it's not a big deal to me. I mean, it's not like it's the end of the world if I get the clap."

"It's not that I'm worried about."

Sousuke pushed himself up sitting, raking the crust of wet sand from his stomach. "You think it'll rain tomorrow? I can smell it in the air."

"Don't try and change the subject."

"I'll use them if I can bareback with you."

Toraichi pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh. "I need you to promise me that you're actually going to use them. I'm not bringing anything home to my wife. Got it?"

"I didn't know you cared about your wife now."

Toraichi's mouth tightened into a thin line. He closed his eyes, refocused, released the tension from his shoulders. "I'm going to the store. If you're still here when I come back, we can sit down and talk about this like a couple of adults."

Sousuke thought about leaving, but there wasn't a point in it. Iwatobi might be 120km 2  but it was a small town all the same. Toraichi would find him no matter where he hid. He dug the cum out of his ass with the tissues he'd brought with him and sat shivering in the ocean breeze.

A plastic bag dropped in front of him. He slid his hand into it and fished about. Soyjoy bar, can of Pocari, 12-pack of Okamoto Crowns. _The Closest Thing to Nothing At All_ bragged the packaging.

"Now I want you to listen to me and I want you to listen good cause I'm only going to say this once. I'm not going to tell you to stop enjoying yourself, just that you should be responsible about it. Can we agree on that?"

"Yeah," Sousuke mumbled into his knee.

"Do you want me to show you how to put one on?"

"I'll look it up."

"Thank you for listening."

"Sorry. About before."

"Nothing I haven't said to myself a hundred times before." Toraichi thumbed at the corner of his mouth.

"Sorry," he repeated, at a loss for what else to say.

When he returned to the dorm, Rin was huddled up with a spare pillow, watching some romantic drama. There was a man curled around his lover, promising he would love her forever and ever. Violins swelled in the background as the woman affirmed her love. It was exactly the kind of stupid shit he'd expect Rin to enjoy.

"Fairytales again?"

"Shut up," Rin said, hugging his pillow tighter. "A lizard like you wouldn't understand."

He sat down and watched with Rin as the movie ran to its inevitable overdramatic climax. Separation, struggle, reunion. The antagonist pointed his gun square between the eyes of the man. _But you'll free her?_ the man asked as he went down on his knees. The antagonist said he would. _Then I'm happy._ Flash, bang, slow motion.

Sousuke burst out into big belly laughs as the man died on the floor and the music took over. He didn't get why Rin only liked the movies where someone died at the end.

Rin, teary-eyed, whapped him in the face with the pillow. "Fuckin lizard."

—

Canker sore, had said the school nurse, nothing to be worried about.

"Well are you gonna do it or not?"

Sousuke offered the condom through the hole.

"For a blowie? Are you fuckin kiddin me? What's even the point? What happened the other guy, he sick or something?"

The stranger smashed his fist against the wall. Sousuke shoved one hand over the hole and flung the other to the lock.

"I know you hear me, fuckboy. Where's the regular guy?"

Grubby, bitten fingertips ground into Sousuke's palm at the intersection of head and fate, trying push him off.

"Mute and a prude. Seriously, kids these days... Thanks for nothing."

The guy slammed the door as he went out and Sousuke waited a few minutes before leaving the stall and approaching the mirror. He hooked his finger into his mouth and turned his cheek out, exposing the slimy grey ulcer. It'd made eating a pain these past few days, but it didn't seem to be getting any bigger.

He left the bathroom for the park proper and sat himself on one of the rickety swings. He kicked one leg against the dirt, then both. The chains groaned under his weight. He swung his legs out, kicking at the waxing moon, building momentum. For a second, the chains went slack. He floated. He thought to let go and see what happened. Hesitated too long. Jerked back down into the seat. He shoved his heels down and slowed to a halt, feet shuffling in the dust.

—

_God, strike me dead and burn the ashes._

He’d come direct from an agonizing tutoring session with Momo intending to relax his overstimulated brain and here Rin was, lounging on the bed in nothing but a tanktop and a jockstrap. His heartrate doubled on the spot. Rin had been packing on the meat lately, going hard in the gym to maximize every ounce of explosive power from his body. In the space where dreams were made—that gap between shirt and chest—his pecs had swelled fuller and from the right angle he could spy the soft pink tip of a nipple. Delts biceps triceps cut intricate lines into the landscape of his arms, traps sloped gently down to his clavicles, gastrocnemius clustered like a pair of clasped fists. He longed to climb atop him, yeah, kissing and sucking every inch of his fresh-shaved skin, worshipping him with his tongue, wanted to delve between those soft, plump glutes flexing and relaxing as Rin lazykicked the air, flicking through his magazine, wanted to eat him out, suck that tart little shitter and work him up until Rin couldn't help but strip him to his bones and fuck him raw.

"Nice outfit.”

"Laundry day. This is all I've got left."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Believe what you want, this is what I'm wearing. If you find it more offensive than any of the times you've seen me butt-ass naked in the locker room, you can go on ahead and avert your eyes."

“Your entire ass is hanging out.”

"All the easier for you to kiss." Rin wriggled on the mattress, flesh jiggling in a way that made Sousuke feel two inches tall. "It kisses back. Doesn't skimp on the tongue neither."

"You could've borrowed some of my shorts," Sousuke choked out and retreated to his desk to make some headway in his mountain of homework.

"Souuusuke," Rin dragged his name out in a lazy drawl. "Sousuke. I want you to look at something. Sousuke."

"I'm studying."

"Come on, it'll only take a second." Rin hopped out of bed and walked his fingers up the back of Sousuke's neck. "I promise."

Sousuke looked. His mouth went dry. Rin's asscheeks were spread wide, exposing a pristine pink hole. Blood plummeted into his groin.

"Fuck off, Rin, seriously," he said, burying his head back into his calculus notes.

"But I wanna ass you a question!" Rin shoved Sousuke's face into his supple buttock, cackling so hard he verged on busting a lung.

Sousuke struggled for a few seconds, then forced himself to go still. Rin gyrated against him, all smoothtalk and honeysilk _, whats wrong don't you want to_ _**ass**_ _ist me?,_ trying to coax another reaction from him. Sousuke gave him nothing, nothing, and Rin let go, still fool-grinning.

"Jokes aside, I do want to ask you a question about your training plan for next week."

There he was, face to face with Rin’s package. The faint smell of soap emanated from the grey pouch and he swore he saw a droplet of liquid near the outline of his dickhead. He stifled a moan. It was _right there_ , right in his face, framed by smooth, succulent thighs, soft and full and begging to be sucked—god, he wanted to suck it!—nuzzle his heavy balls push him down and ride him wanted him to sit on his face and smother him with his fat meaty ass

He shoved his chair back, narrowly avoiding Rin's feet. “I’m going for a walk.”

"You just got here," Rin pointed out, but Sousuke was already in the hall. "If you're going, can you at least bring me a drink?"

Fat cocks, long cocks, skinny cocks, cut and uncut cocks alike, double, triple stuffed, pumping inside him, fucking him crippled. He ignored Momo's overexcited _yamazaki-senpai!_ and ballerino-floated through his peers, knowing if he so much as touched one, he'd drop to his knees, clawing at their pants the way a drugsick addict would claw at their dealer for their poison of choice, drooling and pleading and kissing their feet, fellating their toes. The whiff of a good prick would set him yowling like a shecat in heat— _cock now, meow meow._ He'd give himself to anything with two functioning nuts and a moral compass stuck on magnetic south. Didn't matter if they were ringed with cheese or squeaky clean, he was a hole, nothing more than a hole, and a hole wasn't one for caring.

He ran to the gate and beyond, dialling Toraichi. They met each other halfway on a grassy riverbank halfway between where they'd been, Toraichi come up on him as he laid there, fingerfucking himself dry and drinking in the hurt. He had a packet of lube but no condom, which was more than fine by him.

"Legs up."

Sousuke hiked his legs to his chest and peeled his ass apart, exposing his twitching hole. Toraichi pushed his legs high, buried his head low, and got to work. Spitting slurping sucking, filthy music to his whorish ears and he could only say _more more._ Toraichi flipped him over and sucked on him more, biting and teasing the hole into a wet, fuck me pink. When he was satisfied, he undid his belt and dropped his pants. His cock bulged obscenely in his briefs. He thumbed the waistband down and his cock flew out, oozing pre. He shoved it into Sousuke's face.

"Show me how much you want it."

Sousuke slobbed on his cock until it was dripping wet, too far gone to care about precise technique or anything more complex than the feeling of meat sliding past his lips. Insert Dick A into Slot B, please and thanks. Toraichi grabbed him by the back of his head and fucked his face in fast, harsh strokes.

"Gonna tear your ass up, boy," he growled, twisting his fist in Sousuke's hair til it hurt.

Sousuke clutched at his shirt, wet-eyed and desperate, swallowing harder on him. Toraichi ripped free, got into position above him and plunged straight to the hilt. He wasted no time making good on his promise, hips slapping against Sousuke's wobbling ass as he rawdogged him into the dirt. Sousuke clawed into the grass, felt cold mud cluster under his nails. Spit gurgled in his throat, frothing and rolling past his shaking lips as he moaned into the earth. His cock was squashed between himself and the ground and it hurt something fierce but he liked it that way, craved it.

"Spank me," he begged.

"You don't want to be able to sit at all tomorrow, do you?"

"No, sir." Sousuke shook his head feverishly. "Don't need it."

A hand collided with his ass and he went rigid, deathclenching on Toraichi's dick as the slap echoed through the night. Their pace grew more ferocious, the animal pound of their joined bodies amplifying with each passing second. Toraichi breathed in thick gasps and grunts, spit hissing through his teeth as he dug in deeper, hitting that spot that made Sousuke go blind and reduced him to babbling _oh god oh fuck_ and sounds without words. Toraichi's hands slapped and squeezed at his flesh as if he was nothing more than that, nothing more than a pile of meat and he surrendered to his role with glee, everything around him blending into one until he knew nothing but the smell of torn grass and the mud smeared on his cheek and the man beating on his ass like a drum, snarling _fuckin the shit outta you boy, givin you all. this. cock._ If Toraichi'd been his daddy, he'd've been the biggest troublemaker in the prefecture if it meant getting his ass beat this good every night.

He wound up for another slap as the knot of heat in Sousuke's nuts ravelled tighter. He thought his dick would explode with anticipation. The hand came down with a crack like thunder and Sousuke came with a garbled cry, salting the earth with his seed. Toraichi's thrusts grew more frenzied until he stilled, shooting hot into his guts.

Toraichi rested against his back a moment, then pulled out and gestured at his softening cock. "Clean it up."

Sousuke obeyed, floating in a loveydovey haze as cum dribbled down his taint. Felt warm. complete. Toraichi leaned down and brought their mouths together. Sousuke tasted alcohol in his kiss. He drank it deep, chasing it to the last drop, then sprawled in the grass, savouring his stinging ass. Toraichi pulled up his pants and sat up, one leg kicked out to the side, the other with the foot tucked towards the opposing thigh.

"Now tell me what's eating you."

Back down to reality. Sousuke sat up and gathered his pants and shoes in a heap. "Nothing."

"You wouldn't call me for no reason."

"It's stupid."

"I know stupid, and you're not it."

Sousuke shrugged, picking at the grass. "Been real horny lately."

"That's adolescence for you. At your age I damn near busted out of my fly every time the breeze hit me the right way."

That was about what he'd expected. "It's not... never mind."

"No, no, I was getting ahead of myself. Go on, take as much time as you need."

"Sometimes I jack off four, five times a day and it's not enough. I go to the hole, it doesn't help. I look at my teammates and nothing above the neck registers anymore. They're nothing but a bunch of meat I could be fucking."

It took him a few minutes to build up the nerve to continue.

"The other day I was thinking about a bunch of guys ganging up on me in the locker room and stripping me down. Passing me around like a pocket pussy. Fucking me up real good." Even remembering it brought back that narcotic surge of excitement he'd felt when he'd dreamt it up. "Day before that I was thinking about being chained to one of the toilets in the dorm and getting whored out for ¥500 a pop. Had guys lined up out the door and down the hall. Took every last one of them. And before that, I got thinking about if I was a rockstar and came out on stage naked and did a stage dive and there were all these guys grabbing on me and it was just—god!"

His voice broke. He shoved his head down between his knees, digging his fingers into his shins as his flagging hardon reawoke.

"I want to fuck all the time. I want it so much it scares me. The other guys want it too, but not—not like this. Something's wrong with me."

"Sousuke," Toraichi said softly. "Sousuke, look at me."

Sousuke looked.

"You're a good kid. I don't want you to feel like anything less than that. There's nothing wrong with you. You're at a time in your life where you got a whole bunch of hormones rushing through your body and not a lot of ways to handle them. We'll find a way to get you through this." Toraichi trailed a hand down Sousuke's chest and rested on his package. "All you ever have to do is ask."

Sousuke went home and appreciated his teammates' faces for once.

—

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"I need to do a wardrobe purge before I go to Australia, help me figure out what I should keep. No number scales, just yes, no, or maybe. We'll start with the basics. I bought wayyy too many jocks last time I went out. I wasn't into them at first but they're actually pretty comfy. They just... cup my bits right, y'know? Anyway, how's this make my butt look? Good? Bad?"

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—

It was a small box wrapped in plain red paper. Didn't weigh much, rattled when he shook it.

"Prostate stimulator," Toraichi explained. "Figured it'd work better for your living situation than a dildo. Can't always be there to swoop in and rescue you from your raging lust, much as I'd like to."

"We're at the present stage now, huh. Should I be calling you daddy?"

"Not unless you wanna see how good I am at pushing rope."

—

How he hated that he couldn't tell which way was which on his wallet until it was too late. Coins pinged under the bed and into unreachable crevices, receipts and paper money drifted away, and the ribbon of condoms punctuated the cascade of wallet junk onto the polished floor of his dorm room.

Rin snatched up the condoms with a look of curiosity that morphed into the kind of disgust most folks reserved for open sewers. "The fuck's up with this?"

"Condoms."

"I know what they are, dipshit. Why do you have them?"

"Why do you think?"

It took a minute as the tension worked its way down from his brain, pinching his brow, raising his shoulders, shortening his breath as his fingers tightened into claws and Sousuke thought about leaving before Rin blew his top proper, but that would just piss him off more and he'd probably punch him for being a coward and running.

"You promised me!" Rin pelted the condoms against the wall. "You're better than this."

"I don't see what the big deal is. I show up on time, I put the work in, I haven't let it impact my training. That's not going to change."

"It's the principle of it. A man needs principles. You think it's fine now, but what about when your girlfriend starts complaining about how much time you spend training? You gonna stand by your principles then? Are you? Let's say you cut back on training a little bit, skip practices here and there, your times are getting worse but you're still having fun so who even cares right? Now she's saying you should have more realistic goals. You can't hack it in the Olympics, honey, just be a desk jockey like every other washed-out hasbeen. Now you're sitting in a nine to five waiting to die and everybody's asking you when you're gonna tie the knot and you don't have a reason to keep saying no because the bus to a better life left a long time ago and your ass ain't on it."

"Funny hearing that from you, romantic you are."

"I want a wife, I want kids, yeah, but not right now. Now is when I need to be investing in my future. It's when you should be investing in your future, not falling dickfirst into any cunt that'll have you. Right now, I need you to be dedicated to me and the team two-thousand percent, you got that? Not fifty. Not a hundred. Two. Thousand. Fucking. Percent."

Rin was in rare form tonight, stabbing fingers every which way, casting damnation on the floor, the ceiling, the balcony, but mostly into Sousuke's chest. Sousuke planted his feet, keeping his chin level and his eyes fixed on the wall as he waited for it to be over.

"People get in relationships, they get married and they go to shit. They don't care anymore. They stop trying to make their lives better. You did it, you win, you got the girl, who gives a fuck what comes after? They wallow in their mediocrity and pretend that's what they wanted in the first place."

He jabbed another bruise into Sousuke's sternum. Sousuke swatted his hand away and decided to give him one last chance. "Jesus christ, Rin, I don't care about any of that shit. I'm not going to stop swimming because I'm seeing someone. It's not even serious."

Rin's nostrils flared as he sucked in a massive breath. "It's not serious? Then if all you're doing is fucking around, you should have no problem quitting. Dump her or you're off the team."

"Off the team? Do you realize how insane you sound right now? Not everyone wants to adhere to your retarded holier-than-thou standards. Relationships or whatever, none of that matters. It's just holes and poles. If you can't understand that, get a refund on your dick and get used to wearing skirts."

Rin gaped at him like a fish, mouth shaping into soundless words. He shoved Sousuke into his desk. "You—I'm trying to look out for you! That's all I've ever done, is try to look out for you and now you're, you're—"

Sousuke grabbed him by the wrist, leaving angry red marks on his pale skin. "What, gonna cry? It's okay, princess, I won't tell."

"Fuck you." Rin wrenched free and stormed towards the door. "Go ruin your career for some stupid bitch. See if I care. Quit the fuckin team while you're at it!"

Sousuke packed his duffel and headed for the gym. There were a few guys occupying the machines, but no sight of Rin. He flung his student ID on the counter. The desk goon examined it, then flicked it back at him.

"One, gym's closing soon. Two, you were already in today. Don't say you weren't, you're on the timesheet. Get outta here."

"I just need half an hour."

"You got legs, don't you?"

He dropped his things at the dorm and laced up his running shoes. He left the dorm through the rear and trained his eyes on the horizon, breathing in the dusk. His feet slammed against the concrete, jarring his knees. Stupid fucking shit. He didn't need some virgin telling him what to do with his body. Rin needed to get laid, then he could get off his high horse and walk like everyone else. The vibrations from his knees rattled up his thighbones, his spine, striking in his skull _stop stop_ but he ignored the thought, thundering on.

Before he realized it, he was in town, weaving through the evening crowds in the shopping district. Kids coming back from cram school and housewives doing last minute shopping yielded the road to him with uneasy stares. The sound of plastic swishing came up from behind and followed him for a block before he turned to look.

"What're we running for?" Toraichi asked, a grocery bag flapping against his shoulder.

"Trying to get my mind off stuff." Sousuke slowed to a walk, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the innards of his shirt. Now that he was thinking about it, he could go for some unorthodox exercise. "If you're not busy, could we..."

He nodded towards the cramped alleyway between the bakery and the butcher's shop.

Toraichi rubbed the back of his neck, glancing up the street. "I can't do anything right now. My wife's expecting me back with this so she can finish dinner."

"Okay." Sousuke turned around. "See you."

"Hold your horses. I'll give you a ride back, I just have to drop this off first. Have you had dinner? Why don't you eat with us?"

"Ride's fine."

They weren't but a five-ten minute walk from the Matsuoka house and they spent it in silence. Anger smouldered on down through Sousuke's chest, quietly feeding itself. Most times when he got this way, he shunted the buggersome thought off into a neat cordon where it could rot into obscurity, but this kept clawing back. He didn't care a lick what some neurotic narcissist had to say about him. Not one. He sat on the stoop in front of the Matsuoka house and squeezed his hands into fists, watching the tendons flex under his skin. If Rin said another word to him when he got back, he was going to strangle him.

Toraichi came out with a peach and a bottled water, courtesy of Mrs Matsuoka, and they got in the car. It rolled on smoothly, creeping up the streets with its headlights aglow, pausing for the occasional stray cat or child. The sun had long since set and the skies had deepened to a mellow blueblack. From the ignition dangled the carabiner holding the rest of Toraichi's keys, along with a pocket screwdriver and a driftwood fob shaped like a shark. It jangled whenever he hit a divot in the road. Toraichi told him he could put the radio on if he wanted to, but he didn't bother.

Halfway there, Toraichi let his foot ease off the accelerator. The creep dropped to a crawl.

"Rin told me you had a fight. Or to be more specific he told me, 'Fuck Sousuke, I hate him, he's not allowed in our house anymore', which, for the record, is not true. You're always welcome in my house, whether Rin likes it or not."

"Just him overreacting about everything like usual."

Iwatobi rolled by his window. Breath formed little pools of fog on the glass.

"I used to be friends with your dad, you know. He was never my best friend or anything, but I got on with him pretty good up until high school. See, he'd always been a baseball freak and I'd played with him a few times for fun, but somehow he got it in his head that he needed to spread the gospel of baseball and that it was his sacred duty to recruit as many people to the team as possible. I keep telling him, no, I like swimming, I'm aiming for the Olympics and he'd tell me, no, baseball's a real man's sport, swimming is for girls and fags. And he just wouldn't back down. So I got tired of it and cut him out of the picture. I didn't want to. I enjoyed spending time with him when he wasn't ranting about baseball. But he wouldn't listen to what I had to say."

"Girls and fags, huh."

"Yeah. Did he ever start going to your meets?"

"No. Doesn't even bother to make up excuses anymore."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Not like I care." He shifted his head, rubbing at the smudge it'd left. "He tried getting me into baseball, but I never did. It's dumb. Takes forever to play. Have to rely on other people not fucking up to win."

"Yeah. I'll play it, but I sure as shit won't watch it. The thing with him... the thing with a lot of parents I've noticed, is that they get this idea in their heads that their kids have to be an exact copy of themselves. And you can't do that. You can't. When I was a kid, I would do anything to get out of going to the docks with my dad. If you told me I could skip going to work with him if I cleaned the town sewers, I'd've been in there with a toothbrush getting every last corner. When he died, one of the first things I thought was 'thank god, I never have to set foot on a boat again', which is shitty, but true. Not like I don't get it to some degree. I mean, the day Rin first begged me to take him to the pool was one of the happiest in my life, but I'd love him just as much as if he'd told me he wanted to get into, I dunno, competitive knitting."

He'd be lying if he said he didn't like the idea of Rin sitting at his desk, needles clicking away in a frenzy.

"And it's not just parents, other people do the same too. I remember being your age, getting all frustrated at everyone telling me how I should be. You'll get to a point where you have to start deciding whether they're worth talking to so you can work towards a mutual understanding of the situation or if you should cut them off and be done with it."

The car came to a halt.

"Well, here's your stop. Whatever's going on with you and Rin, I hope you can work it out. I'd hate not being able to see you as much over something petty."

Sousuke got out of the car and stretched his legs. Toraichi crooked a finger at him. He leaned down to the window.

"Can I get a smile before I go?"

He twisted the corners of his mouth into a wan smile. "Thanks."

Toraichi clapped him on the shoulder. "Attaboy. Have a good night.

He returned to the dorms and plowed through the rest of his homework, then folded the basket of clean laundry that'd been loitering in the corner for the past week and half-watched _Die Hard_ until it blurred into meaningless blobs of colour. Curfew crept up and there'd been no sign of Rin. His legs were still restless. He ducked out past the RA and headed for the pool. The lights were out, but sure enough, he could see Rin through the window, doing laps. He shouldered through the unlocked door and approached the water.

"Hey."

Rin kept on as if he hadn't heard. Turn, kick, free. Sousuke shrugged off his jacket and shirt and pulled off his shoes and trackies. He tossed his bunched socks into the pile and stepped off the edge. Cold water rushed over his face, chlorine stinging hot in his nose. He set up in the lane next to Rin and began swimming, slow at first, then matching his pace. Waves lapped against the wall, counting the strokes.

Eventually Rin surfaced, pushing his goggles up. He wiped his face as Sousuke came to a halt in his own lane.

"What I said was uncalled for," Sousuke started, watching his toes skim against the bottom. "I got riled up."

"It's alright. I was way out of line." Rin peeled off his cap and massaged his temples. "I've got a lot going on right now and that was the last thing I wanted to find out. What you do in your spare time is your business as long as it's not impacting your training."

"Nothing's getting in the way of me swimming, I promise."

"It better not. I'm not letting you get out of the Olympics that easy."

Sousuke offered his fist. Rin met it with his own. They orbited each other, legs lazily churning water.

Rin leaned against the lane rope, eyeing Sousuke up and down. "You could've ditched the undies. Be less of a hassle when we go back. Not like I care about seeing your kibbles and bits."

"Didn't want to be underdressed."

"Sure it's not cause you don't want me checking out your butt?"

Rin dove and circled behind him, tugging at the seat of his briefs. Sousuke kicked free and paddled further up the lane. Rin came after him like a shot, goosing and pivoting around his thrashing legs, pulling his briefs down bit by bit. He pinched a bare cheek and got a foot to the chest, shoving him laughing into the rope.

"You're looking a little flat there, buddy. Could use some more squats in your life."

"You might want to reel in this fixation you've got on man-ass. Otherwise folks might start thinking there's something wrong with you."

Rin frowned and kicked him. "I'm just kidding."

"You sure?"

"I know people... say stuff like that about me, but you should know me better than that."

"They do?"

"What, they never asked you? They used to bother Ai about it when we roomed together."

"Never heard a peep."

"Got it more back in Australia than here. But here a little too. I just try to ignore it. They can't tell me who I am, I already know." Rin shrugged. "Are you happy with your girlfriend? Or I guess you said she's not a girlfriend. Lover?"

"Fuckbuddy."

"I never pegged you as that type. Always thought you were the kind of guy who had to give yourself to somebody heart and soul."

"Your intuition isn't as good as you think it is."

Rin combed back his hair, scrutinized him. Looked away. "Guess not."

—

_I can't sleep._

_Are you sleeping?_

_I'm coming to see you, wear something warm._

If nothing else, it explained the rocks peppering the window. Sousuke gingerly pulled the balcony door open and stuck his head out. Down below, huddled among the dark shadows of bushes, stood Toraichi. He waved up. Sousuke waved back, too sleep-muddled to bother trying to make sense of why Rin's dad wanted to see him at two in the morning. He lumbered back inside, pulled on a hoodie and some sweatpants, and crept downstairs.

"How I've missed you."

Toraichi grabbed him by the cheeks and smooched him, then bounded off down the road, leaving Sousuke gaping into the space where he'd been. He hustled after him.

It wasn't until several blocks later that Toraichi slowed to a snappy strut, rolling from heel to heel, elevating on his toes in a bastard combination of a boxer and a dancer. "You're looking a mite rough there, boy. Did you think you could get in a few extra Zs before I got here?"

"I didn't see your texts." Sousuke blinked hard, wiping the crud out his eye. "Don't you have work?"

Toraichi waved it off. "I'll deal with that hurdle when I get to it. Don't tell me you want to go back? The night is young, the stars are alive, and as long as I draw breath, I'll have another bout of misbehaving in me."

They headed nowhere in particular, following wherever their feet led them, crushing grass and weeds underfoot, scraping their soles on the asphalt. They went down to the beach and watched a crab scuttle into the ocean. They considered heading further out of town and decided it would be more of a bother than it was worth, so they stayed at the beach and drew a giant 3-metre penis in the sand with sticks, then added a dickhole that shot out stars and exclamation points and also cum. Toraichi moved to a new patch of ground and started tracing out what looked like a winged cat while Sousuke finished up by adding hairs to the scrotum.

"I know this guy, decent guy, I saw him a while back and he was telling me about this trip he went on to Hokkaido. Got his Jeep with a little bitty trailer hitched on the back and went on up there and did a big long cycling tour. Went out and cycled during the day, came back to his car at night to set up his tent and eat and sleep. Only stayed in hotels when he felt like it. He tells me that and I think to myself, God, wouldn't that be nice. Just get away, go on vacation for a month. But I have work. And family. So I can't." Toraichi shrugged, thumbing at his mouth. "We should go camping one more time before you graduate, me and Rin and you."

"Might be nice." Sousuke shook off his stick and moved over to where Toraichi was drawing stripes on his cat. He stuck his point down nearby and started drawing a loose, undefined shape.

"Yeah, let's have us a boys' weekend. Fishing and hiking and shooting the shit round the fire. The old tent's a little small for three men though. Says it fits four, but that's only if you really love each other."

He put big teeth in the cat's mouth and Sousuke finally realized it was a tiger. He navigated his stick around Toraichi's and added some jagged cheek fur and claws to make it more fierce.

"Put Rin in one of his own."

"He does kick an awful lot. And it might be a touch nippy if we go in the spring. You'll need someone with you to ensure you don't freeze your buns off," Toraichi said, giving them a squeeze.

"Not worried about Rin's?"

"He can keep em warm himself."

It became a thing between them, the late night walks. When one of them got restless, they'd give the other a ring and meet up outside the dorms to go wander. They had sex sometimes, but most often not because Toraichi was tired a lot and Sousuke didn't want to bug him. Once Sousuke'd asked if they should quit the night meetings so Toraichi wouldn't be so tired when he went to work but Toraichi had said he'd be worse without, so he didn't bring it up anymore.

The air got colder and the walking got closer, then shorter, then they resorted to huddling up in the back of Toraichi's car, not saying much but not needing to either. They'd sit there, fingers interlocked, Toraichi rubbing his thumb in circles on the back of Sousuke's hand and sinking kisses into his hair, occasionally murmuring adoration into his scalp he never heard but was flattered by anyway. They watched the dash, counting the minutes until they were supposed to be wake.

"You've gotten bigger," Sousuke said one night, hand roaming across Toraichi's body, exploring the once familiar dips and curves.

"I've been training. Weight, swimming, you get the picture. Been eating better too. Less booze, more veggies. You like?"

"Yeah." Everywhere he touched was firmer, tighter than before. "I like it a lot."

"I think I look pretty good for a guy my age." Toraichi flexed, offering up choice bits of meat to squeeze. "I was thinking about getting a haircut, maybe freshening up the old wardrobe. I mean, might as well, right?"

"I like your hair. Makes you look dignified. Refined."

"Neither of which I am. In all honesty, I prefer it shorter. Used to have a cut like yours way back in the day. This didn't become permanent until Rin started going to school. He got picked on for having long hair because it 'wasn't manly', so I grew mine out so he'd have someone to point to other than frouffy TV stars. I've trimmed it back a bit since then, but I could never bring myself to go back to how it used to be," he said, twisting a bit of forelock. "But Rin's not a little kid anymore. I think it's high time I give this crop a chop."

He thumbed at Sousuke's earlobe.

"Now that I'm thinking about it, you'd look good with earrings."

"Can't stop at fixing yourself?"

"I'm serious, they'd be good on you. Always had a thing for em. I could take you to get them done. Don't even have to do both. One'd be fine."

He'd never been big on jewellery, hadn't given so much as a passing thought to notion of getting pierced. His Iwatobi peers decried it as 'weird' or 'faggy' whenever it came up, but when he lived in Tokyo there'd been studs and rings aplenty plastered across billboards and stuck in his more stylish classmates' ears.

"I'll pay for it. We'll say it's for your birthday." A man on the right side of forty shouldn't be able to pull puppy eyes that good.

"I'll have to think about it."

And Toraichi seemed happy enough, going back to his circling and murmuring and kissing with renewed vigor. Sousuke couldn't help but be happy too.

—

It didn't hurt much, though he hadn't expected it to. He was given a list of aftercare instructions and sent home with a bag of cleaning supplies and titanium in his ears. Rin screamed himself blue when he saw them, but he managed to defuse that by assuring him that a few swims wouldn't kill him as long as he kept the piercings cleaned and didn't fuss with them too much. The season was over and as third years, they'd have to shift their focus from athletics to academics soon enough.

As he read through the care instructions, he received a photo featuring Toraichi in a barber's frock, scissors lined up for the first cut.

_No going back now. Goodbye, glorious hair!_

Sousuke framed his ear with his hand and took a shot.

_**No going back.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about jokingly titling this chapter 'Matsuoka Monologuing'. [These](https://my.mixtape.moe/mdwfjr.jpg) were the kind of earrings I had in mind for Sousuke, if you're curious.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 4 February 2018  
> \- 匿名重工業


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter [tunes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHzr7wdnuqw)

Another night saw him basking in the glow of words he shouldn't've kept. He pressed his mouth to a two month old text, trying to rekindle a long burnt out sensation. The screen laid flat and stolid against his lips. For six weeks he'd agonized over the silence, resenting every message that wasn't from him. He left his phone off most of the time. It was easier to go on without that speckle of hope a fresh text brought. He could reach out, true. But these were the rules. Toraichi initiated contact. Not him.

He'd been naïve in the beginning, prodding him with good mornings and nights and nudes. Never once was he spurned. At worst he'd get a _can't talk now_ or _I'll catch up with you later_ and thought nothing of it til he'd suffered through another one of Rin's romantic dramas.

 _Who is she?_ demanded the philandering protagonist's wife, brandishing his phone like a live grenade. The man hadn't been able to provide a serious answer and thus ensued a marital collapse that made the sack of Troy look tame. Rin bit his knuckles through the attempted murders, unwanted pregnancies, and increasingly overcomplicated cross-generational revenge plots, and he'd wanted to laugh—by the time they reached suicide by trash compactor he felt it his duty to—but it didn't seem as funny as usual.

There was nothing stopping Mrs Matsuoka from picking up her husband's phone when he was in the bath. He bet she did it every day. Perhaps it was Grandma following up with that soup recipe, oh no, it's a dick. Teenage dick, at that. The thought of her face, brows pinched in confusion, then loosening in dull realization haunted him. She would cry, he bet. She would cry and throw things and stomp around then pretend everything was alright. When he came to visit, she would still be sweet to him. Wouldn't even blame him for it, cause of his age. Like he wasn't formed enough as a person to be anything but innocent even in complicity.

It'd be better if she killed him and left it at that.

Now he waited for Toraichi, even when he longed to scream and kick and beg for his attention. He waited when the wanting scalded his throat. He knew how to be patient and so long as what they had remained secret, again the time would come when Toraichi called him 'boy' and held him close.

He closed his inbox. If he got dressed, he might be able to score a little action at the hole. It was late and he wasn't keen to get yelled at about condoms, but he needed something, anything.

His phone buzzed. For a minute, he considered not answering it. Whoever it was could yell at him later, see if he cared. Then he thumbed back over the inbox, swearing if this was another silly cat gif from Rin

_Long time no talk. Everything alright?_

He sat up so fast he hit his head on the ceiling. Rin snorted from the bottom bunk. His fingers flew over the keyboard.

_**Yeah. Been busy with exams.** _

_Exams are the work of the devil._

_**I'm tired of them** _

_**and conferences** _

_**Talking about the future for the millionth time.** _

_I told em the same thing every year and they'd always tell me to aim for something realistic._

_Same for you?_

_**My parents always say I'm going to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever sounds good at the time.** _

_**It's not worth arguing over.** _

_At least that leaves room for you to be something._

Sousuke stared at the screen, boiling with everything he wanted to say. Stupid, inane shit, minor observations that weren't even that funny, anecdotes about his teammates and Rin and school and all the things that hadn't been worth his time before. He wanted to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing and if he'd thought of him any. He wanted to talk about the weather. He wanted to talk until his throat bled and his lungs burst and Toraichi hated him.

_**What've you been up to?** _

_Old buddy of mine called and said he had a spot for me if I had the time._

_Nice vessel._

_Nice payday too, once it was said and done._

_**Good to hear.** _

_Sorry for disappearing on you. It was all last minute._

_**It's fine.** _

_I missed you._

He sunk his fingers into his pillow, strangling the urge to run to Toraichi and throw himself into his arms like the pathetic slavering wreck he was. Forget fucking, if he could hear his voice, if Toraichi would only call his name...

He looked over the edge of his bunk to see what Rin was up to. Reading, earbuds in and mp3 player running. He dialled Toraichi's number, praying he wouldn't answer. One ring. Two. Three. Fo—

"Matsuoka residence, Toraichi speaking."

His core twisted and thudded, carbonated brain bursting into fizzling lightning sparks, ideas and wants and needs popping off so brilliant and furious it paralyzed.

"Hello? Matsuoka residence."

Hot copper drool rose in his gullet. He choked a moment, swallowed it down. "Hey. Hi."

"What're you doing?" Toraichi asked, amused.

"Nothing." His tongue stuck to his lips. Words! Go! Say something! "How are you?"

Toraichi chuckled. Delight shuddered through him.

"I'm quite alright. The wife's roped me into playing cards with her and Gou once she gets out of the bath. I'll whoop em both."

"No mercy for the family?"

"If you spare em too often, they'll start taking you for granted."

He relished the rise and fall of Toraichi's breath, afraid to drive him off prematurely. He laid a hand on his inner forearm and closed his eyes, stroking over the skin, imagining it was Toraichi touching him. Toraichi breathed on, long and deep and slow. The hand floated to his thigh and slid up, settling into the niche between his ribs and his hip. He held the picture of him in his mind. Lounging on the couch with the daily paper and a cup of tea, hair still damp from the bath. Glasses a little fogged. No, fresh cleaned like the rest of him. Legs spread in casual invitation. He inserted himself between them, leaning against his knee. Toraichi put a hand in his hair and talked about something he'd read and asked _what do you think of that, boy?_ and there was no time, nobody but them.

If Rin hadn't been there, he would've asked to see him tonight. Demanded it. He would've marched to the Matsuoka household long after they'd exchanged their goodnights and pelted rocks at his window until he answered. He was one of the top ten butterfly swimmers in the country. He got good grades. He had his pick of scholarships to unis all over Japan. He knew how to get what he wanted. He would've done it. He would've.

"What're you doing for winter break?" Toraichi asked.

"Staying at the dorms."

"You can come stay with us."

"Wouldn't want to be a bother." He didn't trust himself to be afforded such an indulgence.

"There's not a Matsuoka alive who wouldn't be happy to have you at their door. It's your last winter here. Why not have fun with it? Hold on a sec." His voice lifted. "Honey, you'd be fine having Sousuke over for winter break, wouldn't you?"

The phone changed hands. Her voice came in firm and clear. "You're always welcome to come over whenever you want. You can watch Toraichi lose blackjack in person."

"Don't be getting ahead of yourself, Miss Confidence. The cards haven't even been dealt yet."

"You start out strong but we always clean up by the end. No stamina. That's why you never competed in anything longer than two-hundred."

"I think you know a thing or two more than that about my stamina, missy."

Their laughter pealed bell-like, bright and keen.

"You have time to decide. Think about it."

Mrs Matsuoka cut in, "It would mean a lot if you did come. You're not just 'Rin's friend' to us. We enjoy having you over. Okay?"

"Okay."

They ran through the terminal niceties and ended the call. He dropped his phone on the bed and pressed his fingers to the ceiling, trying to expel the tension crooking them. He only ended up making them ache worse.

—

"Dad, please." Rin deflected his father with an outstretched arm as he shucked his shoes, nudging them towards the nearest open slot.

"Am I not allowed to hug my son anymore? Is he too old for that?" Toraichi redirected his attention to Sousuke, barely in from the cold. "Guess I'll have to give my hugs to Sousuke from now on."

It was all the justification he needed. He leaned in, burying his nose in the soft, scratchy wool of Toraichi's turtleneck. "'m fine with that."

"See, he understands. You're never too old to hug your dad."

"I just wanted to unpack first!" Rin dropped his bag and pulled one of his father's arms off Sousuke to wrap it around himself.

"You're going to miss these when you're in Australia."

"I know, I know."

"Your ma's in the kitchen putting dinner together. Give her a hand once you're finished unpacking."

"I thought I was supposed to be on vacation," Rin griped, heading for his room.

Toraichi slapped him on the back as he passed. "Be grateful I'm not having you shovel the walk."

His gaze lingered on the stairs long after Rin was out of sight. Sousuke became overly conscious of the trickle of moisture dripping out his nose and wiped it on his sleeve. Toraichi sighed and donned his coat, then unearthed a pair of fraying gloves from his pockets.

"I'll be outside if you need me. Someone's gotta shovel the damn walk." He laid a hand heavy with promise on Sousuke's shoulder, then left.

The smart thing to do would be to skulk around in Rin's room until Toraichi came back or to offer his services clearing snow. The bag of satsumas his parents had sent with him as compensation insisted he be stupid.

The kitchen was full of simmering pots and good smells and Mrs Matsuoka was at her cutting board. Her blade carved through meat with an assassin's precision, diced vegetables with professional speed. She'd toss the newest ingredient into a pot or pan, give everything a stir, swipe her knife clean, and start on her next victim. She scraped a final bit of mutilated greenery from her board and put it in the sink.

"Hello," he said once she'd laid the knife down.

Mrs Matsuoka slung a tea towel over her shoulder and hugged him, pressing her cheek into his chest the way his mother never did for fear of smudging her makeup. "I swear you're taller and handsomer every time I see you."

And she remained frightfully pretty as ever. He held up the bag and she gestured at the counter, where he set it. Mission accomplished. Her presence rooted him to the spot.

"The food smells good."

"I'm afraid I went a bit overboard." She patted his sides and took a step back. "You got your ears pierced? When did you do that?"

She had citrine seahorses pinned in her own.

Rin stuck his head into the kitchen. "Sousuke, lemme borrow you for a sec."

He accepted the graceful out and nodded towards Mrs Matsuoka, then followed after Rin.

"Are you going to be running around with your girlfriend half the break? Cause I was gonna make plans for us to do stuff but if you're not gonna be here, I won't."

"I told you we're not like that."

Rin nodded, thoughts fleeting elsewhere.

"Rin, be a dear and fetch the futon for Sousuke," Mrs Matsuoka called from the kitchen. "I didn't have a chance to lay it out before you arrived. Make sure he's got a pillow too."

Rin's eyes rolled a full 360, as if this was an onerous undertaking, and headed back the way he came. The front door beckoned Sousuke.

Before he could slink away: "Sousuke, I'd appreciate it if you put up the dishes for me."

He trudged into the kitchen. The left basin had been filled with warm water and the counter was piled with dishes from the impending meal. He took a space beside her and began drying what had already been washed.

"I heard you have a girlfriend. Is she treating you well?"

He wasn't about to explain the concept of a fuckbuddy to a thirty-eight year old woman, so he settled for, "Yeah. She's great."

"That's good. Having a person like that in your life can do a lot of good for you." Mrs Matsuoka rerolled her sleeves and plunged her knife into the water. "Or she'll destroy your heart and scar you for life. That happens sometimes. Hopefully not to you."

"Hopefully."

"If she does, let me know. My swords and I will have a word with her."

"That won't be necessary."

"Are you sure?" She rinsed the blade, tilting it in her slender fingers. "I have a good reputation now, no one will believe her."

"I'm certain."

She handed him the knife, blade pointed down. It was a fine piece of work, kept honed and well sharpened. Could slide right between his ribs no trouble at all. He dried it, then placed it in the rack.

—

There were plenty of places he could be, but few so wonderful as at Rin's bedside, between his legs. Knees closed in around him from time to time and toes wiggled at his side as they idled in the gathering hall. If his neck tired, he could rest against the swath of clean-shaven skin below the cutoff of Rin's boxers. When he played badly, Rin stepped on him. They were bumbling through a G-Rank quest, so he had a decent-sized welt. His hunter fell to their prey. They'd tried it seven times now and had barely made a dent in the beast. Rin's hunter was getting batted around like a baseball, only a sliver of his health remaining. He leaned back. Rin's brows were locked in tight, eyes focused on the screen. His nipples were hard.

Sousuke flicked at one. "Feeling perky?"

"Quit."

"If you didn't want me to look at them, you'd put a shirt on." He flicked it again.

"You're gonna get me—I'm dead."

"The mission was a wash anyway." Once more for luck. Rin stomped on him in retaliation.

"It would've been fine if you hadn't started screwing around." Rin turned off his PSP and flopped back on the bed. "Hey, I've been wondering something."

Sousuke set his own PSP on the nightstand next to Rin's. "Is it why you spend so much on clothes you don't wear?"

"What's it like being with a girl?"

"Thought you didn't want to hear about that stuff."

"I don't want to get bragged at about how you're Donglord Supreme, Master of Dicking. Doesn't mean I'm not curious."

"I mean, I am the master. You're going to have to accept that at some point."

"Whatever." He half-heartedly lobbed the pen sitting on his nightstand at Sousuke's head. "Wish I could do that, bag me a chick and not worry about it. Get so horny sometimes I just wanna tear up anything that moves."

"Condoms exist."

"Yeah, and they couldn't stop me and Gou from existing." Rin glanced to the side. "I asked Dad once. Ma kept on insisting we weren't a mistake, but he gave it to me straight. In a way, it's nice knowing. I always had a feeling I was."

Sousuke picked at the dark stubble dusting his knees. "I get the impression I wasn't planned either."

"We should start a band. Rin and the Accidents, live at five!" He projected the glowing theatre sign onto the ceiling, mouth hissing with feigned applause. "Point is, either I'm going raw or not at all. I should buy a fleshlight and call it a day."

"There's a third year in 207 who sells cunts in a can."

"Nah, I want one that looks like a mouth. I've got a thing for mouths. Do you usually get blown or go for the full monty?"

"Haven't gotten a blowie yet. We usually skip to the main event. Or handjobs."

"How is it?"

"It feels good. Don't know what else you want me to say."

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Use verbs. Adjectives. Nouns. All those big boy words they've been trying to teach you the past ten years. Paint me a picture."

"You can find porn on the internet for free. You don't need me."

"Porn is porn. You're real. I wanna know what it is for real."

He tried his best. Changing the hes and hises to shes and hers. Omitting certain anatomical discrepancies. He couldn't tell Rin how incredible it felt to go dizzyheaded from a fat cock sliding down your throat or how he could chug cum all day long and never get sick of it. Couldn't explain how terrifying and wonderful it was to surrender yourself to another man for the first time. But he could wax poetic about the feeling of a warm body joined with his own, trading breaths and spit, losing all sense of time. The little death and the mix of satiation and sadness that followed and the slow-mounting anticipation for the next time. Plus he could lie through his teeth about the feel of a cunt, which was what really mattered.

"It's a thousand times better than jacking off," he concluded.

"Better than sucking your own dick?"

Sousuke swatted at him. "It was one time, let it go already."

"I can't, it's too good." Rin laughed, spreading his legs in a pose straight out of Playgirl. Sousuke caught a glimpse of cock through his fly. "My offer still stands, by the way."

"I'd rather drink bleach."

Rin chucked his pillow at him in rebuttal. Sousuke knocked it away, squeezing into a soft point in Rin's thigh guaranteed to make him squirm. Groaning with laughter, Rin pounced on him in a siege of red hair and bare skin, knees digging into his ribs, ass heavy against his groin as he pinned his arms. Sousuke upended him and went for a pin of his own. Rin twisted his collar into a hard, choking knot and shrimped free, kicking his arm out beneath him. He clambered onto Sousuke's back and bore down, shoving his face into the discarded pillow. Teeth scraped, bit fluff, stifling his shout as his arms were wrenched crosswise. He tried to get his legs beneath him, but Rin sat on his thighs, holding them in place. He kicked at Rin's back. No use. He cried uncle and was allowed to turn over and catch his breath. He tried sitting up, but Rin shoved him flat.

"Where you going, cocksucker? You're right where you need to be."

Rin's hips dropped and he was done, he was a ghost, breathless and cast out his body.

"Cut it out," he said, trying to sound like he was joking. He hitched a leg around Rin's waist, meaning to stop him from moving, instead bringing them chest to chest.

Rin dug in deeper, knocking at his back door. "C'mon, I know you like it."

He knew. He had to know. All the pretending had been for nothing, he fucking knew it, wouldn't be doing this otherwise. He strained against Rin a final time and collapsed to the floor in surrender. If he wanted to use him, so be it.

Rin laid atop him with a victorious, self-satisfied grin. "You give up too easy. Idiot."

"You're the idiot." His ankle slid down Rin's thighs to settle in the crook of his knee.

Rin slumped against him, laughing into his chest. "Does your girlfriend know a girl who's fine with doing blowjobs? Can you call her and find out?"

"No and no," he said, disappointed.

A long, lonesome whine delivered straight into his collarbones, Rin gone writhing atop him in insolent anguish. The door opened. Both froze in place, neither wanting to know who'd intruded.

"I was coming to say goodnight." Toraichi fixed a pointed look at Rin. "Do me a favour and lock the door if you're going to be doing these kinds of things. I don't want to have to be calling the clinic because your mother passed out after seeing something you didn't mean for her to."

Rin sprang to the other side of the room. "We're not doing any kind of things!"

"You don't have to be ashamed. There's nothing wrong with two healthy young men exploring their bodies together."

"I'm not, we're not—we were wrestling!"

"I believe you," he said, disbelief as plain as the nose on his face.

"Dad, stop," Rin begged.

"I'll stop teasing you when you stop being so easy to rile up. Night, boys." Toraichi closed the door.

"Still want me to suck your dick?"

"Shut up," Rin said, then put on a shirt.

—

His phone lit up with a one-word command: _Kitchen._

Rin was quiet under the covers. He didn't call and see if he was awake. When Rin could sleep, it was deep and impenetrable. When he couldn't, the swaying of trees in the wind was as bad as cymbals crashing nonstop. Sousuke left, pressing the flat of his hand against the door to control its shut, turning the knob slow so the latch slid silent into place.

The hall was lit only by a plugin at ankle level, shaping an arc of light around it. Bathroom. Rin's room. Gou. The Matsuokas. The floor creaked under foot. He froze. Faint rustling of sheets then nothing. The board groaned when he moved again. He slid against the wall, clothes rasping against the paint. The less-tread outer boards wouldn't creak so much. He went downstairs, passing hand over hand on the rail. In every shadow, he saw Mrs Matsuoka. Sweat prickled on his forehead. He scrambled for an excuse to be down here. Late night snack. It was true, in a lateral sense.

In the Matsuoka home, the game was different. Toraichi wasn't in some farflung hollow in the sea, sharing quarters with a dozen men, nor was he arriving on campus in the dead of night to take him away to their own world, away from prying eyes. From sunup to sundown, they were in touching distance, fucking distance, their magnetic fields kept separate only through sheer force of will. Looks held tangible force. The air buzzed between them. They engaged in covert grabassery when they could, playing footsie as they ate, bumping against one another when they could've passed cleanly, Toraichi pressing into him from behind as they raked snow off the roof, saying, _excuse my reach._

They found excuses to spend time together. Scraping ice off the car. Taking a trip to the video store to stock up for a movie night. Running to the grocery to pick up rice or miso paste or whatever other inane good they were conveniently lacking. But there was always someone else. Rin helped scrape cause he didn't want to be stuck in the house with the women. Gou had to go to the store cause she didn't trust them to get what she'd asked for. Everybody came to the video store cause didn't want to be stuck watching stuff they didn't care about. And Mrs Matsuoka was everywhere.

She always had treats for him when he and Rin got back from roaming. She insisted he help in the kitchen come dinnertime. She took an uncomfortable interest in the subject of his alleged girlfriend and asked if she'd like to come over. (The excuse that she'd gone out of town to stay with grandparents had proved airtight thus far.) When Toraichi wasn't home and something needed getting done, he was her first pick. _Could you be a dear and...?_ Much as he wanted to, he never said no and went above and beyond whatever she asked on the off chance that, should she find out, she'd remember the time he changed the lightbulbs in the hall and kill him quickly instead of drawing it out.

He stepped into the kitchen. The electric kettle was on. Toraichi was leaned against the counter, arms crossed. Sousuke leaned against the counter opposite.

"Is Rin asleep?"

"Yeah."

"Miyako's not." The words almost disappeared under the roiling water. "Not yet, anyway."

"I can keep an eye out."

"You sure about that? I'm not gonna make it easy on you." He took his silence as resolve. "Alright."

Toraichi bridged the gap between them and slid his hands into Sousuke's sweatpants. He leaned back, elbow bumping against the microwave as Toraichi kissed him hard, filling his mouth with minty sting of fresh brushed teeth. He breathed into him, skin oversensitized at the roughness of the hands it hadn't felt in two months. His own hands twitched at his side, confused as to where they wanted to be most. Draped over his shoulders, pulling him closer; tangled in his hair, curving down over his cheeks; exploring the back of Toraichi's pyjama bottoms. Toraichi pushed down his pants and underwear in one swift movement, leaving Sousuke's bare ass flush against the cabinet. His cock thrilled at the sudden coldness, swelling to life as Toraichi worked his prick in determined strokes. He grabbed Toraichi by the groin. It was soft.

"Afraid I'm spent. She was begging for a taste of the tallywhacker and I can't say no. Happy wife, happy life." He shrugged. "We're doing something different while the ol boy takes a rest."

Toraichi went down on his knees. He kissed a trail up Sousuke's thigh, nose bumping against his erection amicably. He licked a stripe up his pubic mound, tongue dragging against regrowing stubble. From this angle, the whites of his eyes were huge and vulnerable. Sousuke watched, transfixed, as Toraichi's mouth closed over him.

Despite what he'd promised, his cock immediately became the centre of his worldview. He'd never had a hardon that felt so fucking _good_. That made him feel like this much of a man. In Toraichi's grip, he was thick and big and almighty. Every inch of him throbbed with raw, unfettered power. His balls hung heavy and solid, aching with cum that desperately needed to be unloaded. He'd been waiting weeks, months to blow his load with Toraichi and he would get to do it in his mouth—his balls lurched at the mere thought—surely there was no man more blessed than him right now.

His ass banged against the cabinet as he fucked into him. Toraichi snatched him quick, grabbing the meat of his ass to stop his banging. Spit sucked in Toraichi's throat, bubbled on his lips. Drool ran down his chin and soaked into underwear. Sousuke thrust hard and fast, ass flexing into his grip, blissed out. He was made for this. Made to fuck and suck and vice versa.

Toraichi dropped his jaw, tongue lolling out as he stared dead up, letting him watch his cock glide silky smooth over that hot pink wetness. Sousuke uttered a wounded noise deep in his throat, threading his fingers into Toraichi's hair. God, he was going to cum on that tongue, he was going to make him drink it all, drink every last drop—god, he wanted to cum! Toraichi laughed and swallowed him whole, sending nerve-shattering vibrations up the length of his cock. Sousuke's knees buckled, sending his elbow again colliding with the microwave. Toraichi tapped the side of his glasses, then gestured at the open air.

Sousuke forced himself to look up. He roamed an errant path across the family photos that studded the walls wherever there was a shred of free space. A wedding photo featuring Miyako in a billowing bridal gown. Toraichi teaching Rin how to swim. Miyako round-bellied with Gou, Rin in one arm, grasping at the camera. Some included Sousuke himself: cheek to cheek with Toraichi, showing off gasping fish they'd caught at the pier; him and Rin on the back of a camel as second graders, both looking ready to cry; him alone, cheeks frostnipped and nose runny, holding a snow brick meant to be added to the out of focus igloo in the background.

He focused on one picture framed in gold, a little off-centre. Toraichi sitting on a stump, a boy on each knee.

It was during the summer vacation after he'd met Rin, when they'd gone camping in the mountains. The day was good, fair weather and the air thick with the scent of fresh, robust greenery. He stayed closed to the path, picking pine needles off low-hanging branches, putting them in his pocket, smelling them, chewing them when nobody was looking. Toraichi pulled sap off the trees and rolled it up in between his forefinger and thumb to show them, making himself sticky when he held their hands to help get through rougher terrain. Rin was a little mountain rat, tearing off the path and sprinting ahead, losing himself in places where only deer ran, crashing through swaths of foliage so thick you lost sight of the path within thirty paces.They walked barefoot in the river, splashing water on each other while Toraichi set up the tent.

Night came and brought with it a firm appreciation of the campfire they'd ate dinner over. Rin acted like he was grown already, picking at him for being scared cause he'd never camped overnight before, had never known this terrible dark. Toraichi chided Rin, saying that he'd been scared too his first time, that everyone was, and told Sousuke that it was alright if he laid close to him. He didn't, figuring it would make him look like a sissy. Rin talked himself to sleep and without his chatter, the night grew vaster and more consuming. Strange sounds encroached on their tent. Insects, unseen animals, trees creaking and collapsing in the distance. At any moment, a wolf would burst through the tent flap and tear him to pieces. He placed a hesitant hand on the sleeping bag beside him. The cavernous expanse of Toraichi's arms came down around him, pulling him closer, so when he cried out—

Toraichi's nails dug hard crescents into the back of his thighs.

—he was there and it was alright.

Toraichi finished swallowing and pulled back, wiping his mouth. Sousuke slackened against the counter, spots and stars dotting his vision. He hiked his sweats back up. Toraichi rose to his feet with a tired groan and stretched out his legs.

"If I wanted another son, I'd've made one by now."

Sousuke looked at him, thick in post-cum haze, uncomprehending.

"You called me Daddy. Is that what you like about me? That I'm a father?"

The world stopped. Shame cascaded into his gut.

"No, I—" Sousuke tightened the grip on his waistband, wishing he could smash his head in the cabinet until his brain was paste on the counter and he was dead forever. "A lot of the videos I've been watching have that stuff in it. Must've been stuck in my head. Sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. I'm not angry at you. Hard to forget what I am when it's plastered all over the walls."

Sousuke clenched the counter, screaming inside. No matter what Toraichi said, he'd ruined it, ruined it like he ruined everything.

Toraichi ruffled Sousuke's hair. "You're going to have to learn to not be so hard on yourself someday. Get some sleep."

He couldn't. He laid in his futon, besieged that excruciating kind of awakeness where you could hear yourself blink. Each time his eyes shut, a new image appeared before him, some real, some imagined. Toraichi tying his shoes, wiping his nose. Scolding him when he shirked his homework. Kissing him on the forehead before he went to work. Coming to every meet he could and taking him and Rin to get ice cream after.

It wasn't something he'd thought seriously about in years and years. Not since dinnertime with the Matsuokas was the best worst thing in the world because it meant he'd have to go home after. Back when Rin had said something stupid about _well if you were a girl I'd marry you, then you could stay forever_ and for a couple days he hated being a boy. The idea that he could marry Gou instead didn't occur to either of them at the time. When it did, his parents rejected the backyard shotgun wedding Rin presided over and informed him he still had to be back by seven. Gou said they could be long-distance married, so he continued to write Matsuoka Sousuke on all his school work until his teachers started deducting points for it and called his mom.

_Your wife would take your name anyway, not the other way around._

He drove the heels of his hands against his eyes, grinding them into the sockets. This was nothing but a pointless mire of unproductive bullshit. He knew it. Having Toraichi the way he did now was better than having him like that.

He rolled to his knees. Rin was snoozing away, mouth agape. He crawled to the closet and slid it open. There was a space on the bottom shelf where the futon had been. He dragged the cover over and crawled in, tucking the edge of the cover under his head. Deep in the wood, the ocean roared, and the thoughts drained away and gave him peace.

—

"Rin," Mrs Matsuoka said, scaring the both of them out of their skins.

"What?" he bit out, omitting the obvious _goddammit_.

"Are these your dishes in here?"

"We're going to a movie, I'll get em when I come back."

"Please take care of them now. It'll only take a minute." Her ponytail slithered over the massive centipede embroidered on the back of her bomber jacket. "I'm giving Gou a ride to the store, did you want me to give you two a lift?"

"My legs work, I can walk."

He hurriedly washed the tableware stacked beside the sink and heaped them onto the drying rack. Sousuke watched over the counter, only relaxing when Mrs Matsuoka went upstairs to fetch Gou.

Rin went to the door and yanked on his shoes before she could rope him into any more menial labour. "Not like they're going anywhere. I said I'd do it when I get back. I'm a man of my word."

Sousuke hummed and laced up his boots. The sharkskin shoes were gone from the divider. Put away for the winter, he guessed. They headed out. Heat boiled from the corners of Rin's scarf. He huddled into his coat, steaming and scouring the streets for something worth talking about. Nothing doing. His eyes darted to Sousuke, suspicious.

"What."

"What'd she ever do to you?"

"It's not about me."

Steam churned more furiously from the plaid. Snow crunched faster beneath his boots. Sousuke let him have his lie. Everything was about Rin, in the end.

—

The floor shook with a thump as Rin tumbled out of bed. Sousuke couldn't tell if the fall had woke him or he'd had one of his odd precognitive moments in which he woke just before something happened. Either way, Rin laid hissing and cursing softly on the floor. He heard him start to sit up, hesitate, curse a bit more, then a long, aggravated sigh and the impatient smack of flesh on flesh. The worn out pillowcase scraped across his cheek as he turned his head. Rin had propped himself up at a crooked angle. There was a rhythmic rising and falling in the blankets tangled around his legs.

How long would it take until Rin permitted himself to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, he wondered. How long would he resign himself to self-care and slimy underwear in the morning? There was something sad in his stupid, arbitrary wait. He slithered up to Rin, working through the knotted sheets to strip away his pajama bottoms. Rin started to say something, then quit. He kept his head down and pushed Rin's legs open. He didn't care if Rin was like him. He didn't need him to be.

He gripped the base of Rin's cock and pressed the flat of his tongue to the underside, baptising him in spit. His lips closed over the tip, drawing off smoothly before realighting on the flared ridge. He twisted down and pulled back up in rhythm, making great, slurping sucks. Rin crumpled inward with a choked groan, as if all the air in his body had been blown out by force. Hands grabbed at his head, smashing his nose into the reddish stubble crowning the cock's base, frantically fucking his mouth. He gagged and gurgled and the pressure let up after a moment, but the hands remained, coaxing him on.

 _Swallow it, oh fuck, swallow,_ was his only warning before Rin shot hot and bitter into his mouth, legs going rigid on either side of him. He obeyed, each throaty gulp plainly audible. Rin sucked ragged breaths through his nose undercut with a desperate, virginal whine, arching into the last few shots. When he finished, Sousuke disentangled himself from Rin's mess and crawled back to his futon. He pulled the cover over top his face and laid still as the dead. The bed creaked as Rin got back in. Sousuke scoured the last dregs of cum from the crevices of his mouth as the space heater in the corner rattled away unperturbed.

 

"I fell out of bed last night." When that didn't get a rise out of him, Rin added, "Hit my head on something, I think."

"Huh," he said, turning the page of his magazine. Outside, he could hear kids playing in the snow.

"Did I wake you?"

He poured himself some more coffee.

"Did I?"

—

Dad's Room remained the sole mystery in the Matsuoka household. It wasn't, as one might expect, Toraichi's bedroom. That he'd glanced inside a few times. He'd seen Mrs Matsuoka's négligées hanging on the laundry basket next to Toraichi's briefs. He'd seen the bed Toraichi slept in, with its unmade covers and the glasses case on the nightstand. Dad's Room was a unique entity located on the first floor. Toraichi was in it now. There was music going and a faint mechanical whine behind the door. His hand rested on the knob.

"Are you nuts? Don't mess with that. I went in there once as a kid and the look on his face..." Rin shook his head. "I thought he was gonna kill me, no joke. Even Ma doesn't go in there."

"I'm only stopping in to say goodbye. It's not a big deal."

"Your funeral."

Rin stood as far down the hall as he could to disassociate himself from this suicide mission. Sousuke tested the knob. Wasn't locked. He pushed the door open.

In its inception, the room had been destined to be a bedroom. Now it looked more like an oversized closet. There were cardboard boxes stacked here and there with writing in blue and black marker. Kitchen, Bathroom, Spring Clothes. In the corner of the room was a workbench, a chair, and Toraichi. He had a desk lamp on, hunched over a piece of wood with a rotary tool. A dark grey respirator covered his mouth and his regular specs had been replaced with safety glasses. Above the desk was a magnetic strip that had various tools attached to it and a boombox perched on the corner playing a Toshiki Kadomatsu casette, though he doubted Toraichi could hear it through his earplugs. Sousuke pulled up a box marked Spare Linens and sat beside him. Sawdust drifted through the air, sticking wherever it landed. He wiped a puddle of dust off Toraichi's thigh. He lingered there, rubbing again. Toraichi remained focused on the carving. His hand smelled like pine when he brought it home to roost in his lap.

Eventually the rotary tool and the music quieted and Toraichi pulled his plugs out.

"If you've got something to say, you'd best say it quick." His voice was distorted, plastic.

"I wanted to see you one more time before we left."

Toraichi picked up a cheap horsehair brush and swept away the dust clinging to the wood. "Consider me seen. Thanks for stopping by."

Sousuke shifted on the box like a scolded child. "Are we still going camping in the spring?"

"It's up in the air at this point. We're light-handed as is. Hide said he wants to get his son on deck this year so I might have some leeway. I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"Alright." He squeezed his hands together between his knees. "Didn't know you carved."

"I usually throw them away when I'm done. Every once in a while Miyako or one of the kids'll rescue one from the burn pile. You might've seen a couple around the house."

He had. He'd taken them as part of the Matsuoka family landscape, thinking nothing of them beyond being nice trinkets. This one was shaping up to be a bird.

"She tells me that I should open one of those online stores and sell stuff on there and gets all frustrated when I tell her I don't want to. She doesn't get it. She's practical. This..." He pointed at the beak. "This doesn't jive with her. I spend all this time and money on this and I throw it in the trash. She tries to get me to think about what we could do with the money from selling them and I just don't care. I don't. I made it and I'm glad I did and now I'm done with it."

"Might be cool, doing something you like for money."

"Doing something for money means it's a job. I have one of those, I don't need another." He brushed over a spot he'd done before. "I'll forgive you this time cause you didn't know any better, but for future reference, you don't come in here unless someone's dying. Period. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"It's nothing personal. I don't let anyone in here. Not my friends. Not Rin. Not my wife. Nobody." He traded his brush for a carpenter's pencil and began darkening the linework of a sketch further down the wood. "I love my family. I do. But I need somewhere I can just... _be_ for a while."

A puff of sawdust stirred across the bench as he leaned over and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"We have pudding. You want a pudding? You should have one. Miyako bought a bunch for some reason. I think it was on sale, I don't fuckin know." He waved vaguely at the door. "Happy New Year."

If there was something intelligent or meaningful he could've said, he didn't know what it was. He patted Toraichi's dust-caked knee.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Toraichi muttered through the cracks in his hands.

Sousuke headed for the door. The tape started back up.

"You're alive," Rin said, awestruck. He elbowed him aside and opened the door a crack. "Hey Dad, thanks for letting Sousuke stay over. We had a great time."

Terse, indistinct words came from the other side of the door. The joy drained from Rin's face.

"I mean... yeah, I know. I just thought... I'm sorry. Love you. Bye."

He closed the door. The lock clicked behind him.

"We should go."

They said their farewells to Gou and Mrs Matsuoka and loaded up their luggage. They stepped out into the frosty afternoon. The glare off the snow was so bright it made their eyes ache.

"I bet everyone'll be excited to see us. Ai said he'd bring some sweets for us. Well, you and Momo really, he knows I'm not going to eat them. By the way, Ma packed some food for you. Said she wanted to be sure you were eating right. Told you she loves you more than me. Guess Dad does too." Rin let out a strange, syrupy laugh and picked up his pace. "I'll be glad to be back in a proper gym. Gonna do squats until my thighs explode."

They segued from the residential area to the road by the sea. The ocean rushed against snow-crested shores and Rin said nothing. Sousuke toyed with the insides of his coat pockets, scraping at bits of lint and loose change. For as much as he couldn't stand Rin's blabbering, his quietness he loathed orders more. There was something wrong about it. He scooped up a wad of snow and fired it at the back of Rin's head. For a moment he was scared. Scared that he wouldn't respond the right way. That he would call him an asshole and shrug it off and carry on as he had. Or worse, that he wouldn't say anything at all, trudging onward in those black boots with the laces done sloppy.

Rin turned his head with a weak smile. "You think you're slick, don't you?"

He dropped his bags and ducked down to grab at what he could, strafing as he shaped his own weapon. He launched it like a fastball, scored a glancing hit on Sousuke's face.

"That was ice, you shit!"

Sousuke shoved him over the guard rail and heaved himself after, landing skewlegged while Rin tried to dislodge himself from an otherwise pristine bank with a him-sized hole in it. Sousuke offered a hand. Rin took it and yanked him into the bank, sending a flurry of powder whiffing up to the daylight.

Before Australia, Rin used to tell him that he loved him. He'd say it without shame, the way little boys did, his lanky arm hooked around his neck as he dragged him round town. He'd say he couldn't imagine life without him. He'd say they were best friends and they would be together forever.

The snow settled. The tips of Rin's ears peeked out from beneath his lopsided beanie. His face was ruddy with frost and exertion. Sousuke thought that with the two of them here now, like this, Rin might say it again.

Rin scooped up a heap of snow and sprinkled it over Sousuke's head. "Took eighteen years but you're finally cool."

"Dick." Sousuke flicked a handful back into his face.

"Takes one to know one." Rin scraped his mug clear and wiped his hand against Sousuke's chapped cheek. One half of Sousuke's head went numb, the other started heating up.

Gusts of white air exchanged between them. The icy glove laid still against his face. Rin wiped at it again, then pinched Sousuke's hat down over his piercings. His fingers trailed down to the scruff of his neck and rubbed at the coarsening hairline. Would need another haircut soon. The snow packed beneath Sousuke's cheek melted into his jacket collar, down his shirt. He shivered. Rin kept on rubbing. Sousuke tensed, intending to fix Rin's beanie.

Rin sat up and brushed the snow from his hair. "Let's go, I'm freezing my nuts off."

—

Sousuke wriggled his toes as he stretched into his seat. His socks were damp with saltwater, smothered in his shoes. The rods were in the trunk. Nothing they'd caught was worth keeping and they'd lost a jig on some underwater debris. The headlights formed golden pools on the beach, lighting up the trail of footprints from the waterline. A fat seagull waddled across their view. He sipped at his cola. It'd lost its fizz, but he didn't mind.

"Can I be one of those obnoxious adults who asks what you're doing after graduation or have you dealt with too many of those already?"

"Other than the Olympics? I don't know. I try thinking about what comes after and I can't see it." Sousuke leaned into the door, soaking in the coolness of the window. "Even then, the money... if you don't make it to the Olympics, you're fucked."

"That's something for your folks to worry about, not you. I made damned sure Rin won't have to make ends meet on his own. If he wants a part-time gig for spending money, that's fine, but the rest I've got. I know your dad would do the same, even if he is an asshole."

"I'd hope so, with this doctor-lawyer-whatever bullshit," he said. "What was it like for you?"

Toraichi thumped the heel of his hand against the steering wheel, thrust his head back into the headrest. "God, where do I even begin. The training, that's one thing. You think you bust your ass now, just you wait. But that wasn't the problem. First day I get to Tokyo, ready to set myself up in the dorms and start my new life—and I find out some rich asshole I've never met got me kicked out of my room cause he didn't want to share. No other rooms were available. The RA tells me tough tits, stay with your parents, never mind they're on the other side of the country. So I found a place to stay but I gotta pay for it somehow.

"Here's my life for the next year and a half: get up at five sharp and try and get everything I need done for that day out of the way. Wake up late? You're going to morning training on an empty stomach, sucker. Then classes, evening training, and work. Came home at eleven at the earliest and dropped straight into a coma. Didn't even eat dinner or nothing half the time, I was that tired. Then I got up and did it again."

Sousuke sucked at the rim of his can, then tipped it back against his mouth like he was drinking, even though it was empty.

"The guys on my team—man, those guys. They weren't guys I could swim a relay with. I could get in the water and do my leg, but every time I did, I didn't know why I bothered."

"That bad?"

"They used to beat my ass in the locker room. Or tried to. They didn't count on me being as squirrely as I was. But it didn't change anything. They were always there ready to do it again the next day. I tried focusing on my individual events, started getting qualifying times, my coach is saying I'm a serious contender for the national team, but I barely cared. So when Miyako comes to me and says she's pregnant, I say, okay, I'm done, that's it. And that was it."

"That's a lot different from the story you used to tell."

"What sounds better to a kid: 'I loved your mother so much that I wanted to start a family with her more than I wanted Olympic gold' or 'Daddy used to get his ass beat cause somebody saw him hanging round Nicho and he got sick of dealing with it'?" He sank into his seat, watching the seabirds take wing home. "Don't think I'm trying to scare you off going pro. I'm not."

"You aren't."

"Don't stress yourself out too much." He patted Sousuke on the knee. "Remember: even if things with your parents go by the board, you'll always have the Matsuokas at your back."

It was a nice sentiment, but Rin would be on another continent and Toraichi wasn't about to drop everything and run to Tokyo for him. He climbed into the back seat and unzipped his pants. There wasn't enough room to lay down, so he stared at the floor as Toraichi turned on the radio and crawled after him. There was a brown spot in the footwell, cherry syrup dribbled out of a straw from a slushie he and Rin shared ten years back. The smell was gone, but the stain remained.

Sousuke sat in Toraichi's lap and grabbed their cocks together, squeezing until a sense of divine relief settled over him. It felt good to have a fistful of cock, solid and strong and comfortable. He squeezed harder, pulling up harshly.

"Easy, now. I only got one of those. Can't afford to go breaking it."

He didn't listen, beating their meat with a vengeance, sinking into the depths of his balls where things were simple and easy to please. He twisted his thumb over their cockheads, smearing pre, thinking of Toraichi fucking him breathless, brainless. Paying no mind to the cramped conditions, he rutted feverishly, forcing out a moan to affirm that he liked this, wanted this more than anything else. Toraichi's cock didn't feel as firm as it had before. He squeezed again, trying to bring life back into it, and Toraichi hissed at him to stop. Sousuke pressed his mouth to Toraichi's, hoping to keep him quiet.

Toraichi turned him away with the heel of his hand. "Don't you do that, boy."

"My breath stink?"

"I'm having a hard time keeping it up with you acting like this."

"I'm not acting like anything."

"For fuck's sake." He pried Sousuke's hand away and let his softening cock flop into his lap. He wiped his hand on a stray napkin scrounged off the floor and yanked him close.

Sousuke slumped against him, huffed into his neck. No sense in struggling. Hands roved over his back as a choking, oily bubble of anger welled up within him. Mrs Matsuoka must be waiting patiently at home, the way a good wife did. She'd meet Toraichi at the door and take his coat and they'd kiss and she'd warm up his dinner. The dishes would already be done and the rest of the house in order and he didn't have to do anything but put his feet up and be man of the house til it was time to go to bed. She would give him a backrub and kiss him again and they would go to sleep side by side, his body curved to hers, his arm around her waist, the way it was supposed to be.

Toraichi clapped his shoulder and sat taller. "Hop back shotgun, we're taking a trip."

"A trip?"

"Yessiree. Hope you don't have any tests tomorrow. Get a move on, we're burning moonlight."

"I'll get in trouble."

"And you think I won't? Come on now, scooch."

They climbed back into the front and Toraichi pulled out his phone, reading aloud as his thumbs pecked across the screen, "'Sousuke is dealing with some personal troubles so I'm getting him some breathing room for a day or two, please tell work I am horribly sick with the plague and the kids that I love them. Thank you so much, you're the light of my life and I love you more each and every day, heart heart heart, smiley face.' Sound good?"

"Good enough."

"Might be a while before I figure out where we're going, so get comfy."

Ten minutes later his phone lit up in his lap. He pulled to the side of the road to check it.

"My ass is covered and she called the school pretending to be your ma to get you off the hook." He stashed his phone in the cupholder and got back in gear. "She likes chocolates, by the by. The nice ones, with fillings."

"Duly noted."

 

They'd tried for a twin room, but when they arrived in Tottori, the hotel's only available room was a Western-style single. They hemmed and hawed over the notion of sharing a bed for the clerk's benefit before accepting it. The room's accoutrements were as modest as the price tag, but it was a pleasant enough place to spend the next night or two.

"For all your big talk on the way over, I thought we'd be somewhere ritzier. Rin would've insisted on a beachfront view, at the very least."

"Rin doesn't have a mortgage. When he does, he'll learn to master the fine art of romance on a budget." Toraichi paused as he unbuttoned his shirt. "I should write a book on that."

Sousuke laid back and stared at the ceiling, taken by an unfamiliar sensation. There was lightness afforded to him where it never had been before. Featherweight limbs, bird bones. Muscles full of air. He felt himself rising off the bed, into the ceiling, outside of this world and its structures and confines and into another. The warmth of Toraichi's body served as an updraft, speeding his ascent. He melted through the floor above them, the roof, beyond, and there lay beneath him Tottori, the hotel and the shore and the dunes. Pinprick ant people loitered in the streets, lit in cool white pools of the lamps overhead. Yellow-orange rectangle windows studded the buildings of those not yet tired. Above him, through hazy cloudcover was what looked to be an island, craggy bottomed with a mane of trailing moss. He reached for it.

He blinked.

He was back in the hotel bed, hand affixed on Toraichi's forearm. Toraichi looked over his shoulder, eyes like stars.

"What's up?"

"You should write a book about being a budget sugar daddy."

It earned him a good whap in the stomach and an affectionate, "Zip it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this story got a surge of hits on Father's Day. I'm glad people have their priorities in order.
> 
> I'm coming up on a big AO3 milestone soon and was thinking of doing something special to celebrate, but I wasn't sure what. Suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 17 October 2018  
> \- 匿名重工業


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tunes [for the end.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9ee_Ez6tFk)

Sousuke grunted and pushed himself up onto his elbows, rubbing the crud from his eyes. He oriented himself in the unfamiliar room. Drawn blinds, an alarm clock with red numbers, brochures for local attractions on the table, a TV with the channel selections posted on a laminated sheet, another man beside him. He watched him a moment, arm flung carelessly across the pillow, glasses folded neat on the nightstand. He wasn't asleep, he could tell from his breathing, just waiting with his eyes closed. Thinking. Sousuke elbowed closer and rested his head on Toraichi's shoulder a moment, thinking with him, then wished him good morning. Toraichi half sat up, hissed, lowered himself back onto his side.

"Ahh, crap. I always get out of sorts when I'm not sleeping in my own bed." Toraichi fumbled for his wallet. "Mind running to the store and picking up a heat wrap? Wait, wait, here's a little extra. Get yourself something to eat."

He got dressed and headed out, the cool morning breeze picking away his dreamfog and leaving ample room for a slow, encroaching dread. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.

Everything seemed normal. Birds peppered the sky, pumping themselves to starpoint heights before canting into nothing. The streets of Tottori remained identical to memories of previous visits, with early morning joggers and elderly women watering their gardens before the sun came on too strong and the terse, aborted calls of delivery men on their routes. He pinched himself. Nothing changed. Doubt remained.

They didn't have wraps, but they did have muscle balm, so he bought that and a newspaper and a couple of coffees and spent the rest on whatever looked filling. By the time he returned to the hotel, Toraichi had turned on the TV to check the weather. Clear skies the whole day. Sousuke crouched over him and kissed him up straight. Toraichi sunk his fingers into the balm and smeared a great swath across his low back with a sigh.

"Let me tell you, blue collar work _and_ aging in three words: my back hurts." Toraichi accepted the coffee and paper and propped himself up against the headboard with his pillow. "Don't ever get old. You're too good for that."

Sousuke stripped down to his skivvies and sat beside him, opening his bento. "I keep telling you, you're not old."

"I'm ancient by my standards. Didn't think I'd make it to thirty." Toraichi put on his glasses and opened the newspaper, shaking it out straight. "Kinda didn't want to."

Best let that lie. "Can I have the sports section?"

"Sure thing. Gimmie a head's up if there's anything interesting. Murder, betrayal, dirty dealings."

"The Sungoliaths picked up a guy from Nanbu. Apparently he's hot stuff."

His hands tightened on the paper and he shook it out again, muttering about how papers didn't use to be this flimsy. "Nice to know that some of us can make it with the city boys. Bet he's happy as a clam at high water."

"Yep."

"No murders?"

"Nope."

They ate and worked through their sections of the paper, commenting now and then on a story that caught their eye. Toraichi left the TV on for a good minute, only found variety shows and the weather, turned it back off. The room warmed to the morning and as Sousuke laid down the sports, he realized there was nothing here more interesting than the man beside him. His eyes wandered across Toraichi's near nude form. Muscular hills and soft fatty ledges, bone and sinew and crowfeet just forming. Nothing the Greeks would consider putting into marble. But beautiful still.

Now that he was thinking about it, this was the most undressed he'd seen him since they'd started getting together. Spade-shaped toes, tipped with neatly trimmed semilunes. Little scars and marks on his limbs that couldn't be seen in their usual lighting. Hard knot of his ankle. And hair, more than he'd ever realized. Across his arms, his legs. Nestled in a dense bush beneath his briefs. Snail trail from up his waistband, spreading across his pecs like the canopy of a tree. The overhead light cast it in a strange, almost ethereal glow. None of the guys on the swim team were hairy like that.

Toraichi caught his eye with a chuckle and preened. "You like that, huh. Used to shave it, but it wasn't worth the hassle once I stopped competing."

He swallowed thickly. "Can I?"

Toraichi set the paper aside and sidled up, fingers tiptoeing along his calf. "Didn't even have to ask."

He laid an uncertain hand on it, the way you petted an exotic animal you didn't know would bite or not. The hair was soft and smooth to the touch, unlike the crispy, gnarled mats he'd seen in Western porn. When he stroked with the grain, it slid smooth under his fingertips; against, bristled up. He traced what patterns in it he could. A smiley face, a heart, his own name. Each time he smoothed them over, returning his canvas to its undisturbed form. He pressed his face into it and breathed. Soap, faint but present, muddled under his body's natural scent. His skin was sticky from a night's worth of sweat. The inner workings of his body carried on unabashed, gurgles and inhales, his heart beating steady against his ear.

"You'd look real cute with a little bit of hair on you." Toraichi's hand drifted to Sousuke's chest. "Here." Over his abs. "Or here. Or maybe..." Back up to his armpits. "Here."

They dug in, tickled hard. Sousuke kicked into the sheets, laughing as he wrestled out of Toraichi's grip and clambered atop him, pinning his arms to his sides and burying his face into that wonderful chest, growling and nipping and laughing more. After a while, he let go. Toraichi draped his arms over him.

"Yeah, real cute. But I always think you're cute, so what do I know."

"'m not cute," Sousuke mumbled into his fur.

"Of course not. You're very handsome. You should be in all the movies."

"All of them?"

"Every last one." Toraichi slid his hand up Sousuke's thigh in wandering circles. "Don't know about you, but I'm not ready to join the waking world just yet."

"Thought your back hurt."

"What're you, crazy? I'm not gonna pass up the opportunity to have my boy in a real bed for once. And it feels fine enough anyhow."

Sousuke brought his head up and met him in a kiss. His lips were thin, dry. He could taste ponzu on his breath, tiny grains of chewed-up rice that had got stuck in his teeth. But it was nice all the same. That he could be here. That he could be real and not have to worry about anything beyond these four walls. Beyond this bed, even. For once, he almost didn't feel like fucking. Like he could lay here forever and do nothing but kiss and be okay. A stony knot formed in his throat. He kneaded at it with his fist, trying to clear it out. It was stupid, thinking that. Thinking those things that Rin would say. Wanting nothing more than to be somewhere with somebody and simply exist alongside them.

Toraichi rolled him onto his back and layered kisses across his collar, lips buzzing against his skin as he hummed, glasses sliding along the bridge of his nose. He didn't know the tune. It was before his time. He thumped his toe along to it anyway. Nobody wanted to get up and get the lube, but Toraichi rose to the occasion and probed his slick fingers as deep as he could get them. His ass was pretty well fucked by now, so they didn't bother with much preamble.

Toraichi pushed into him in one long stroke. The knot dissipated. Sousuke clung to the back of Toraichi's neck with a sharp inhale. He shifted on the bunched up sheets, angling himself upward, closer. It seemed criminal that being penetrated felt so good. As if it was making him into something greater than he could be alone instead of the lesser, weaker man his virgin self thought he'd be. They laid there a while, kissing and speaking each other's names back and forth, unhurried. Without his head crammed against the side panel of a car door or his elbows digging into the cracked stone of a shrine, the minutiae of being conjoined like this were more apparent. That exquisite, slightly suffocating pressure of Toraichi atop him. Hair prickling on his legs. The rich, ripe smell of sweat.

Eternities passed. Toraichi moved. He pumped slow, back bowing under interlocked ankles, words of praise flowing one into another until the need for them subsided. Moans slithered into reality and evaporated in the warmth between them. Sousuke dug his nails into Toraichi's back, then eased up. Smoothed over the dents he'd left behind. He wasn't going anywhere.

Reality shrank to the confines of their mouths, celebrated in spit and firework sensation. Stubble scurfed across his chin. Each glide of tongue against tongue peeled away apprehension, exposing his naked, pulsing core. On instinct, he tried to disengage and gather the shreds of himself into a papier-mâché barrier. Toraichi grasped his jaw, holding him in place. He shrank into the pillow, scared to breathe for fear of choking. Afraid he would say things he couldn't take back.

Blame it on the bed. On the lighting. He couldn't pinpoint why, but this time was different. Even when they'd been close, they'd never been this close. This—he loathed the word—intimate. He tried thinking of swimming. No good. He did times tables but only made it up to the threes. Toraichi dug deeper, speeding up the fleshy slap of his balls, the wet squelch of his fucking. Sousuke's tongue nudged against Toraichi's palm as he inhaled, tasting salt. The hand tightened on his jaw. Toraichi fucked harder, chaining together incoherent grunts and oaths, throwing everything into it, fucking him with frantic, focused determination, cock scraping out yelps and moans on the backswing. He pumped back against him on impulse, accepting him deeper. His erection slapped against his stomach, smearing pre across his abs as that preliminary tension began winding in his balls.

His name came forth in a harsh gust. Then a second time, more insistent. Sousuke faced Toraichi and saw him as he was, glasses dangling from his ears, just as raw and desperate as him. Toraichi swelled with that boundless Matsuoka excitement, resounding with joyful noise, obliterating his juvenile resistance. Sousuke pushed the glasses back into place and forced himself to relax, to be open for him, and was unafraid.

Calloused fingers skimmed across his ribs as Toraichi hissed, hips stuttering. Words faltered on his lips. His head dropped and whatever he'd said was lost in a groan as he came. Every spurt sent the heat gnarled in Sousuke's guts hitching tighter, pushed him closer to the edge. Toraichi thrust a final time, then wrapped his shaking, sweaty hand around Sousuke's cock and stroked him off. Sousuke came with a jolt, thrusting into his fist, shots overflowing through his fingers and slicking down to his balls. Toraichi coaxed him on in a heavy, breathless voice, saying, _that's it, boy, that's it_. Cum stuck to the soft brown hair on Toraichi's stomach, pooled in the valleys of Sousuke's bare skin.

They collapsed together, laying red-faced and entwined in one another, neither wanting the be the first to let go. Eventually the glow dwindled and Toraichi settled into the sheets beside him, hair mussed into silky latticework on the pillow, sunlight laying golden bands across his skin. Sousuke rolled onto his side, sleepy and content. There was no world beyond this bed. No reason to pretend this wasn't what he suspected. Nothing left to do but go with it.

Toraichi wiped his hand on the sheets and traced lackadaisical spirals over Sousuke's cheek. "Afraid I'm gonna have to kiss you if you keep looking so cute."

Sousuke batted the finger away and buried his face in the pillow, heart swole to bursting.

Yeah, this was some kind of love.

—

Around noon they hauled themselves out of bed for lunch and a drive to the dunes. They were uglier than he remembered. Spurs of crabgrass encroached on greybrown sand. Camels grunted and ruminated, hocking up wet masses to distract themselves from the early spring cold. The sky was the uniform cloudless blue of a paint swatch and the only people around were local retirees uprooting weeds and kids ditching school. Too soon for tourists.

Toraichi observed the sands from a distance, detached from the world. Sousuke impulsively inserted his hand into Toraichi's and the blue above was a little less harsh, the dunes a little more gold. Toraichi acknowledged it with a squeeze, let it remain there long enough that someone might see.

They walked away from the main dune to get closer to the shoreline. Slate grey water licked along the beach. It wasn't so different from the beaches back home. Homely, but familiar enough so you didn't mind. Far from sight, a ship's horn resounded in the empty, birdless sky.

"Do you like fishing?" Sousuke asked, breaking the quiet. "As a career."

"Trying to get hired on?"

"Dunno. Maybe."

"It's not a matter of liking or disliking for me. It pays the bills. There's parts I enjoy and parts I don't, same as any other gig." Toraichi sunk his fingers into the sand, carving a dry river through it. "Being out there gives you a sense of perspective."

"That you're one with nature?"

"That you don't matter. You can do everything right and the sea'll kill you anyway. Kids, family, doesn't change a thing. You're not special."

The side of the dune began shifting, collapsing towards their feet.

"That why you never let Rin go on deck with you?"

"Matsuokas are destined to be eaten by the sea. Ate my dad and his dad before him and his before him, all the way back to the beginning of time. Someday it'll eat me too."

"You've made it this far."

"Doesn't mean much. My grandpa tried to get away. Figured if he became a welder, it wouldn't get him. Things were good for a while. One day he figured he'd take some time off and go swimming with his friends. Big storm rolled in out of nowhere, everybody got separated. He was a strong swimmer so no one was worried about him, but by the time his friends got back ashore he was nowhere to be seen. They ran up and down the beach trying to figure out where he'd gone. An hour later they found him wedged against some rocks, facedown, drowned in six centimetres of water."

"He almost made it back."

"Almost isn't enough. You can almost do a lot of things, but in the end, you didn't. The universe doesn't care why. You just didn't."

"Doesn't mean changing jobs won't work out for you."

Toraichi buried his hand deeper and dragged it the opposite way in a long, disemboweling gash. Veins bulged in his forearm as he clenched at unseen things.

"They act like you're a freak if you want to do that at my age. Like I don't know I'm supposed to do one thing my whole life and die. I've put in the applications, I've called, I get nothing. I apply for apprenticeships and they say they'd rather bring on a younger guy. I apply for office jobs and they see no degree and almost two decades of manual labour and think I'm some shitbrain who can't do anything else. I've tried. God knows I've tried. I'd have to move the whole family to even hope of getting anything decent and the money's not there." He laughed bitterly. "Money's not here either, if we're being honest. We had to bring Rin back early cause of that and he was _pissed_. Didn't want to hear nothing about it. Running around Australia like a goddamn lunatic, shacking up with strangers, crying about how he doesn't want to come home."

That was news to him.

"He didn't tell you about that? He didn't tell you how the police had to go find his sorry ass? I wonder why." Toraichi tore his hand out of the dune and raked it through his hair. His voice boomed over hills, splitting the flat blue sky. "I fuckin wonder why he didn't tell you he kicked up this whole fuss about how I'm an asshole and I'm ruining his career and I always give up on things when they get tough, like I haven't busted my ass for him since the day he was born! Like I wouldn't sit under a bridge and eat dirt the rest of my life if it meant he could achieve his dreams! I would. But I'm not stupid. I know how to play the hand I've been dealt. I tell him that and it's the end of the world. Everything's fine and if it's not, it's a goddamn calamity. No in-between with him."

He felt obligated to give Rin support in absentia. "He's gotten better about that."

"If you say so." Toraichi kneaded the back of his neck, pacing until the redness had subsided from his face. He looked to town. "Things aren't bad, but I wish they were better."

He shouldn't've said anything in the first place. "If there's anything I can do..."

"Don't look so sad, boy. You do enough already." He watched the waves lick at his shoes. "Look at me. I came here to help you and you're the one comforting me."

"Not like that's a bad thing," Sousuke said brusquely, burying his hands in his pockets.

Toraichi smiled to himself in a way that made a sense of inadequacy burn in Sousuke's chest. "No, it's not."

There had to be something. Crazy, nonsensical thoughts ricocheted through his head. Petty comforts like food or a kiss could only go so far. It had to be lifechanging. Buying him a house—didn't need it, already had one. Finding him a new job—an insulting gesture, no matter how you looked at it. Winning the Olympics—that was something for himself, not Toraichi, and it wouldn't mean much when Rin was doing it for that reason already. He had to do more. He had to be more. He just didn't know how.

Mistaking his silence as a regression to his original concern, Toraichi said, "We'll get a plan hashed out for you. Doesn't have to be while we're here, but before you head up to Tokyo. And if you really can't figure out what you want to do after you're done swimming, you can always come home. We'll be a couple of smelly old fishermen together."

"You're not smelly." Never mind that they were wearing two-day-old clothes and no deodorant. "Not that smelly, anyway."

"You haven't caught a whiff of me after a squid haul."

"Is that what they mean when they say, 'fishermen never die, they just smell like they do'?"

Toraichi laughed harder than the comment merited, as if trying to force out the blue tingeing everything he'd done since they left the hotel. Sousuke laughed too. Their footsteps overlapped in the sand as they rocked back and forth, chirping about this, that, and the other. For now, he could do this much.

—

He'd almost drowned once. Anybody who lived by the sea had a story like it. Inspired by his preliminary forays in learning how to swim, he'd taken a kickboard down to the beach and decided to see how far he could go. According to his classmates, there were islands out there. Where, or how far, he wasn't sure, but ignorance didn't make him any less determined. He would make it there by himself and back by himself, just to prove he could.

He paddled around the shallows for a bit then headed straight for the horizon, navigating waves as they came at him. The board hitched and sunk under his stomach, trying to wrench out from beneath him, but he brought it back where it should be, pressing his chest flat against the foam, kicking onward, singleminded. His fingers began to ache from gripping so tight. He let go with one hand to give it a rest. The board spun out, striking him in the face. White hot burning flooded his nose and mouth and eyes as the world went murky blue. The board jerked out of his grasp and was cast away as the sea sucked and churned around him. Fatigue confused his arms. His feet strained for a floor that wasn't there.

A couple of teenagers out fishing hauled him up, crying and vomiting and just conscious enough to be deliriously glad nobody could tell he'd pissed himself. His mother blamed him for going off on his own, asked why he was always alone. His father didn't say anything. For a few weeks after, he loved the ground. He took his shoes off and walked around barefoot so he could feel it strong and firm beneath his toes.

The day was like that. Suspended in a monstrous, consuming void, pummeled by the sheer magnitude of these new desires, desperately searching for anything to hold onto. In the moments they connected, when Toraichi saw him as more than a boy, his feet found their base. Exhaustion subsided. The overwhelming ache that penetrated every molecule of his being morphed into a good hurt. He didn't want to come up. He wanted to stand on the floor of this sea forever.

They bedded down, spent from their adventures. Sousuke was out the instant he hit the sheets. It was still dark when he woke. Toraichi was watching him with a quiet lonesome look. He told him to go back to sleep. Sousuke edged closer until their foreheads met on the pillow. It was too dark, too close to see any light in Toraichi's eyes. It was the perfect time to tell him. He almost did.

He closed his eyes and went to sleep instead.

Day came. Having nothing to pack, they lounged in their bubble world like a pair of cats until the concierge called to remind them they had to leave. They loitered around town, hitting up the restaurants they hadn't made it to the day prior and retreading sites they knew from previous visits. Night fell. They sat in the car on a neglected side road. Toraichi hadn't said anything about leaving yet. His phone buzzed. He let it ring a couple more times before answering.

"Hey, how's it going? Yeah, we checked out. He's fine. We were able to get things situated. He's a good kid, he deserves to have somebody who'll listen to him when he needs it. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. He's always been a lizard and his wife's hardly—no, he went to grab us drinks for the road." He stroked Sousuke's thigh. "Say, I was thinking of taking him to dinner, so it might be a little while longer before I get back. Do you want me to pick something up for you and Gou on the way? We could do pizza. Okay. I'll do that. Love you too. No, I love _you_ more. Alright, alright, you got me beat. See you soon."

Toraichi set the phone in the drink holder and sat there. Minutes rolled by.

"We need to leave."

Toraichi straightened up and turned the car on. "Yeah, I guess we do."

Sousuke sank into himself, placidly watching the world whip by. Something niggled at the back of his mind. He pushed it deeper until its cries were reduced to a whisper and soaked in the sounds of the road. The gearstick thunked into place. The engine growled and lulled. Junk rattled around in the back. Air streamed past the cabin with a blustering howl. Now and again, he was aware of Toraichi looking at him out of the corner of his eye. His knuckles had gone strangely pale. The radio was put on for a couple minutes, the full width of signals scrolled through, turned off.

A bump in the road jolted Sousuke back to the surface. Time had passed. More than what should've. If they were headed the way they'd come, they should be home by now. He brought it up and at first, Toraichi said nothing. The speedometer crawled closer towards the red.

"It's the other way, right?" he repeated.

The car abruptly lunged forward, engine growling harsher than before.

"Have you looked at apartments yet? We should do that."

Sousuke sat up, shifting closer to the door. "I haven't, but I was going to do that with my parents. We don't—"

"No, we're here, let's go, let's do it. We can be in Tokyo by dawn, we'll get some rest, and start looking right away. Shouldn't take more than a few days," Toraichi said, pitch steady rising. "We'll get a nice place with a kitchen and bath and a big balcony so you can dry your swimsuits. I'll cover the deposit and key money."

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, yes, I do!"

The road snapped into a long, narrow ribbon before them. Toraichi grabbed Sousuke's wrist, clumsily spidered up to interlace their fingers. His hand was hot and trembled with manic energy. Sousuke stared at the dash in silence, afraid of what would happen if he dared look at Toraichi. The car lunged again, Toraichi squeezing him til it hurt.

“I'll be so good to you if you'll let me. Whatever you want, you can have it. Just say the word and I'm yours."

He stared bright and fever-eyed into the dark, not at the road, but far beyond.

Sousuke's fingers sprawled white, whiter still. The void opened around him, vast and blue and without refuge. "I can't. I can't."

The needle plummeted back into the low double digits. Toraichi pulled his hand back, wiping it on his trousers.

"Just playing." He laughed acid harsh. His expression held the jagged, bare ugliness of a mountainside sheared off by a catastrophic earthquake. His voice twisted. "Should've seen the look on your face. I could never..."

The car slowed to a halt. Toraichi got out, letting things idle on the side of the road. He sat on the guard rail, looking seaward.

Sousuke focused on a chip in the dashboard. He should get out. He should tell him that he loved him and wanted to be with him and didn't care who hated him for it or how difficult it made things because this was real. He knew it was. He needed to get out.

But he couldn't.

He sat there, shaking.

It was a long, excruciating wait, but Toraichi finally returned to the car. He gripped the wheel as if coming back down to earth after a long sojourn on the moon, uncertain of his own weight, his reality.

"That wasn't a very funny joke, was it," he said flatly, staring at the road. The bridge of his glasses glinted dull yellow in the headlights.

He put the car in gear and turned around.

—

"We should stop seeing each other."

He wanted to say, "Okay," and make it succinct and poetic, but he mostly just cried a lot.

Mr Matsuoka was still nice about it.

—

His collar was soaked by the time he'd splashed enough water on his face to get the swelling round his eyes down. His sclera were shot through with wispy red, but he couldn't do much about that. He sniffed thickly, wiping at his mouth. What a fucking embarrassment he was, doing that kind of thing in front of him. He knew better than that. If he'd had any second thoughts, that sure would've made up his mind.

The thought set things in him churning in a way he'd rather they'd not. He could remember the scene frame by flawless frame. The idle rumble of the engine. How his hands had remained steadfast on the steering wheel since he'd got back in. The way he wouldn't even look at him when he said it. He stuck his face in the basin and tried to yell it out but all that came was a broken sound. His tongue scraped porcelain. That hand on his knee once he'd lost it and how it drew away when he realized it'd only make things worse. Another half-dead gurgle lurched past his lips. Pack it away nice and neat. The sooner he could stop thinking about it, the sooner he could get back to business as usual.

He ran more water over his face but he looked a wreck regardless. If he kept his head down, no one would notice and if they did, they wouldn't ask. He returned to Room 201 ready to call it quits for the day, or the rest of his life.

"I see King Slacker has deigned to grace us with his—You alright?"

Of course Rin had to be awake.

"Fine," he said, dragging himself up the bunk ladder.

"Right then. Figured I'd wait for you to come back before calling it a night, so I'll go ahead and tuck in. How was the trip?"

After a few minutes of nothing, the bunk creaked beneath him.

"You hear a local guy got recruited for the Sungoliaths? Thought that was pretty cool. We're gonna be in the big leagues like that soon. Luckily we won't be getting the shit mauled out of us. You know what they say, 'Football's ninety minutes of pretending you're hurt, rugby's eighty minutes of pretending you're not.'"

 

"Everybody missed you. Couldn't go twenty seconds without getting asked when you were coming back."

 

"Did my dad say something weird to you? He's said some real far out shit to me before, but he doesn't mean anything bad by it."

 

"Hey—"

"Just stop already."

"Well fuck you too." Quieter, he added, "Good night."

—

Rin didn't stop. Every day he offered to go jogging or play cards or run around mooning first years and spent an inordinate amount of breath reminding him how exciting it was to be graduating soon and how great it'd be to move on to bigger and better things and being his usual motivational poster self. It was all very twee. He knew the day would come when Rin would get frustrated and chain him to a table to interrogate him, but for now, he could coast by unmolested, waiting out the end of the year.

He opened the door to 201 after a sluggish day of classes and an unfinished dinner and got a pair of tennies to the face. Rin, busy tugging on his compression shorts, didn't seem remorseful in the slightest.

"We're going for a run. You need to get your blood pumping."

"Not in the mood." Sousuke rubbed at his eye as the sole's imprint throbbed to life.

"It wasn't a suggestion." Rin picked up the shoes and shoved them into Sousuke's chest. "Run. Now."

"I need a nap."

It was true. He was tired. More than anything else, he was tired. Like he'd been jabbed through with a straw and sucked clean of whatever vitality he could've claimed. He climbed into his bunk, put his earbuds in, and cranked his music. Beyond the bass and drums he could hear Rin scoffing in disgust, heading out the door. His eye pulsed in sync with music.

Forty, forty-five minutes later, Rin popped up and whapped him in the forehead. "Don't blow me off to do something if you're not gonna do it, you fuckin mong. You better be asleep the next time I check or else."

He drifted off before Rin had time to make good on the 'or else' and woke to a can of cola next to his pillow.

—

The next time he went to the hole, it'd been patched up.

—

"Hey, Rin?"

Rin's pencil stopped skritching. He didn't look up, but Sousuke knew he was listening.

"I like men."

Rin turned around, folding his arms over the back of his chair. "I know."

He wasn't yelling yet, which was more than he'd hoped for. "Could've fooled me."

"I didn't... get it right away, but it clicked eventually. You really had me going with that girlfriend bit." Rin cocked his head, peering at him as if to ferret out the rest of his secrets. "The fuck's that face for? You think I was gonna disown you?"

Sousuke inclined his head in a vague way.

"If I had a problem with it, I would've said something. Gonna stop sulking now that you've got that off your chest or is this unrelated to your current tizzy?"

Another tilt.

"That person you were meeting was a guy, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"You get dumped?"

It came harder this time. "...Yeah."

"I'm sorry. That sucks."

Sousuke let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, overwhelmed by a pleasant numbness. Scooped hollow, in a good way. He stretched out in Rin's bunk, unable to believe that he'd done it. Rin abandoned his homework and sat beside him.

"That guy's a fucking idiot. Can't tell when he's got something good."

"We were at different points in our life. It wouldn't have worked out." It sounded reassuring, even if it wasn't true. "It's not a big deal."

"You're goddamn right it's not, so stop acting like it is. Forget him. You're the best guy I know. You're going to go out there and kick ass and one day you're gonna look back and laugh thinking about how upset you were about someone as stupid as him."

He honestly looked like he believed himself. Sousuke didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. Rin sprawled in the sheets beside him. He hooked his foot around Sousuke’s, guiding it where he pleased.

"Thanks."

"Yeah, yeah, you know I love you no matter what."

—

You could hardly hear anything over the wind roaring through the gingkos around campus, but Sousuke's ear was keenly attuned to that voice congratulating Rin. He held his diploma tube tight and considered turning around and finding an alternate exit. It was cowardly, yes, but the thought of having to face him was too shameful to bear. He hung back, knowing that eventually somebody would notice he was missing. Other graduates strode past him, eyes meeting him with a confused flicker before snapping away and looking towards their own futures.

He couldn't creep around the matter for the rest of his life. Despite his bitching, Rin was too entangled with his family to make them unavoidable.

He strode out, gripping his diploma. Mr Matsuoka was dressed in a respectable white button-down and khaki slacks that fit trim around his thighs, perfection under the leaf-dappled sunlight, and they were back in the hotel bed and he couldn't do this, he couldn't—but he had to. Mrs Matsuoka was there too, taking pictures of Rin. She was the first to see him and ushered him over so she could get a picture of the two of them together and he was thankful for Rin's energy so he could face the camera and give an almost genuine smile. Mr Matsuoka told her to go on ahead and they'd head to the Iwatobi graduation shortly.

"Care to spare a moment, Sousuke?"

"Don't hold him up too long," Rin said, "We were going to grab something to eat with the guys."

"I promise I'll be quick. Then he's all yours."

"Text me when you're done so I can come find you." Rin bounded off to catch up with some lesser-known pals.

"Well then." Mr Matsuoka's gaze pinned him to the spot. "Let's take a walk."

They reentered school grounds and went to the green zone, where trees as wide around as oil barrels stretched far above. Sousuke picked at a water sprout growing out of an oak, then leaned against it. Mr Matsuoka scuffed the toe of his loafers against the path, studying branches overhead. His hands were stuffed in his pockets.

"Not digging the earrings anymore?" he asked.

Sousuke reached for his ear, painfully self-conscious of its nakedness. "I had to take them out for the ceremony."

"Figures. Heaven forbid someone ruin graduation with a little metal. How's it feel to be an adult?"

"Not much different."

"It doesn't really sink in until you're living on your own and suddenly have all these bills you don't want." He chuckled and wandered closer.

"Thank you," Sousuke said, looking down, reading the texture of the bark through the back of his shirt. "For everything."

"Don't be so stiff." Mr Matsuoka pulled him into an embrace.

Sousuke reflexively steeled himself, then remembered it was just the two of them and bowed into his shoulder.

"Sorry if I put you in a tough spot," Mr Matsuoka said. "I know it's... hard to handle this kind of thing. It's hard for me too. But you have a lot going for you and I don't want to take away from that. I just wanted to let you know that if you still want advice or whatever, I'm there."

"Okay."

Mr Matsuoka drew away. The warmth of where he'd been cooled into nothing, as if he'd never been there at all. "Best of luck to you."

Mr Matsuoka moved to leave. Sousuke surged forward and embraced him again, seized with a fervent belief. They could be together, Tokyo or elsewhere, for real this time, and nothing could stop them. They both wanted it. He knew they did. Forget Miyako, forget everyone else, they would get in his car and drive and never stop. Gun it all the way. His fingers gnarled in the back of Toraichi's shirt until the seams screamed under the strain. They would get an apartment together, or a house, somewhere with plenty of space where they could just _be,_ and a dog and good-paying jobs that wouldn't kill them and the rest of the world could fuck off. So long as he held onto him, Toraichi was his and no one else's.

"Rin's going to put out a missing persons report if you don't hurry." Mr Matsuoka disentangled himself with a smile. Squeezed his arm one last time. Let go.

He could say that it was like being vivisected and having his organs raked into a blender set to purée. That it was world ending, perhaps. However one described that kind of hurt, he let it wash over him and headed down the path in search of Rin and the rest of the graduates. He paused to put his earrings in and looked back. Mr Matsuoka waved farewell. The hurt waned. He gave him a nod in return and watched him leave the way he'd come. He stood there a while, then carried on his own way, listening to the gingkos sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is over, but I'm not done with Toraichi just yet.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 23 October 2018  
> \- 匿名重工業


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